


Lonely at the Top

by Medeafic



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Dirty Talk, Dom/sub Undertones, In Public, M/M, Rimming, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-09
Updated: 2011-12-09
Packaged: 2017-10-27 03:33:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/291177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medeafic/pseuds/Medeafic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>~Completely and utterly~ AU.  Zach is an actor who's signed on to play a construction worker in a film.  Chris is a construction worker, who is paired up with Zach to help him with his acting research.  NB: In this fic, Zach and Chris are much younger than they are now - they're in their early 20s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lonely at the Top

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Так одиноко наверху](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176198) by [EarthlyWays](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthlyWays/pseuds/EarthlyWays), [Hvostya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hvostya/pseuds/Hvostya), [Netttle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netttle/pseuds/Netttle)



> The Russian translation of this fic has some fantastic illustrations and a video - click the link above to check it out.
> 
> This fic is for LJer sofiawonderland, for the fic/craft exchange I signed on to do...uh...a long time ago. Thank you for your patience! She generously allowed me completely free reign in her prompt, so this is the result.  
> The genesis of this fic was a discussion I had with Brilliant Beta about tower cranes. A million thank yous to emmessann, both for giving me her idea and her amazing beta work on this fic. Hearts and flowers (and lentils).

“Wow. It’s so… _big_. I didn’t realize it’d be so big.” Zach blinks up into the sun, impressed.

“Yeah. Big.” The guy next to him shifts uncomfortably.

 _I’ll bet if you try really,_ really _hard, you could sound a little more gay_ , _Zachary, and make this guy extra-comfortable,_  Zach’s inside-voice says. He looks away from the crane structure and back at his companion: sun-lightened hair under a fluorescent hard-hat, tan skin with golden hairs furring his forearms, clear blue eyes that won’t meet Zach’s.

“Sorry, man, I must sound like a total fool,” Zach says, giving his best self-deprecating chuckle. “So anyway, I’m Zach. I’ll be your annoying newbie on-site today.”

“Yeah. Over here.”

With that, Frowny McBlue turns and stalks across the construction site, not even glancing back to see if Zach is keeping up. Not that Zach has any complaints, watching the way Blue’s ass muscles clench in his jeans with every broad step he takes. Zach takes his time walking after the guy. Judging by the reception so far, this view will be the most fun he has today.

He probably should tone it down while he’s on-site. It’s been a long time since he’s been around construction workers, but Zach is pretty sure that most of them won’t appreciate being leered at. This guy isn’t overly welcoming, at least. Zach likes to think he’s personable, so the only reason he can think of for the attitude is the gay factor.

They reach the site HQ, a demountable with a few steps up to the door, and Frowny bangs it open as he walks in. The door rebounds to slam shut in Zach’s face, so he opens it again slowly and enters the building.

Only Frowny is present, slumped in an uncomfortable-looking chair and – well – frowning at Zach.

“So, total shot in the dark here,” Zach says conversationally, leaning back against the closed door, “but I’m thinking you don’t like me. Have I done something to piss you off?”

No response, although the scowl gets deeper.

“How about we start again? I said, Hi! I’m Zach, and you said – actually, you grunted, and then I looked up at that craney-thing—”

“Tower crane.”

“Hark! He speaks.” Zach gets another glare. “I’m kidding. Okay, forget I said that. So you grunted, I looked up at the tower crane, and I  _still_  haven’t found out your name.”

“Pine.”

“Is that, like, some kind of construction nickname?”

“Chris Pine,” the guy says, his jaw flexing.

“Well, hey, Chris Pine, it’s great to meet you. I’m Za—”

“I know who you are, Mr. Quinto.”

Zach waves his hands around. “This is excellent. Excellent material.” He knows he’s laying it on thick, but this guy seems to have some bug up his ass. “You call all new guys  _Mister?_ ’Cause I can totally use that.”

“No. We only call new guys  _Mister_  when they’re related to the company owner.”

“Oh, okay. I get it. You think I might narc on you or something?”

Chris Pine gives him a look so withering that Zach is pretty sure it would melt steel, but before he can say any more, he’s slammed forward as someone tries to make their way into the office.

“What the fuck’s going on in there?” demands an accented voice. Pine raises one eyebrow at Zach, who’s stumbled across to the other wall, and sort of smirks.

The door blasts open again and a broad-shouldered, messy-haired man stomps through the opening.

“I asked, what the fuck,” he says again, enunciating each word carefully, “is going  _on_  in here?”

“I was leaning against the door,” Zach explains, trying to look less stupid than he sounds. “Sorry.”

“Wonderful, another bloody Hollywood idiot,” the man sighs, but Zach has to admit it’s refreshing after Pine’s sullen muteness. Even if he  _is_  being baldly insulted in what seems to be an Australian accent. “In future, don’t do that, because it’s a bloody safety hazard is what it is. God forbid one hair on  _your_ head be harmed. I’m Karl Urban. I’m the Foreman. Do everything I say whenever I say it. Understood?” Karl Urban, Foreman, stalks to the desk in the corner, which is stacked with papers and blueprints.

Zach slips into the chair next to Pine’s, and discovers that his first assessment was correct – very uncomfortable. “Sure thing, Boss.”

“Are you winding me up?”

“Uh, no. Sure thing, Foreman?”

“Sure thing, Karl, will do.” Karl raises one eyebrow so high that Zach marvels at it, and decides that his own renowned eyebrow lift should help him fit in around here.

“Right. So.” Karl takes off his hard-hat and sits, leans far back in the chair, his hands folded over his stomach. “Your uncle said you needed to get some work experience around construction sites.”

“Yeah, for a job.”

“Naturally.”

“No, I mean for an  _acting_  job. It’s research. I’m playing a construction worker on this quirky little independent film, totally key role, and – excuse me, did you just  _snort_  at me?” Zach turns to Chris.

“Let’s move this along,” Karl says, exasperated. “You’re here for the week, we’re lumped with you, and there are certain things you need to know while you’re on-site. One, always wear your hard-hat.” Karl turns to take one of the helmets hanging on hooks behind his desk. He turns back to throw it at Zach’s stomach like a football, ignoring the muffled  _oof_  Zach makes. “Two, no open-toed shoes, so you’ll have to go home and change those—”

“I brought shoes to change into,” Zach says triumphantly, holding up his backpack.

“I’m so glad you’re all prepared, my darling,” Karl replies.

Sarcasm is obviously a prerequisite for working here, too.

“Three: you arrive seven a.m. sharp, sign in with Pine here, and you get a smoko at nine, lunch at eleven, break again at one and then you can leave around three, three-thirty, depending on what I want to get finished for the day.”

“Okay.”

“And four: I’ve paired you with Chris to try to keep the damage to morale limited. Please try to stay away from the rest of my crew as much as possible.”

“I’m not some kind of rabid man-whore,” Zach complains. “I can keep it in my pants.”

“I meant because they don’t take kindly to actors studying them like bugs, but I’ll rest easy in the knowledge that you’ll keep your genitals tucked away.”

Karl stands; so does Pine. So does Zach, because hell if he’s staying seated and vulnerable.

“You’ll be shadowing Princess, here, while you’re on-site.”

“Princess?” Zach gives Pine a wicked grin. “Princess,” he repeats, and Pine goes red.

“Don’t worry, Quinto,” Karl says, with a friendly slap on his back. “I’m sure you’ll pick up your own nickname here too, given time. Chris will take you through induction this morning and then we’ll go over a few more rules at break. But for now, just follow Chris.”

“It will be my pleasure.”

Pine shoots him a glare, but Zach bestows his most angelic look on the guy. Karl bangs out of the office, and Zach grabs at Pine’s arm. “So he’s Australian, right?”

Zach sees an echo of his own completely innocent expression on Pine’s face as he nods. “Yep. Australian.”

“Awesome. I need some work on my Aussie accent.”

  
***

  
“You totally set me up,” Zach hisses after their first break, as he follows Pine back across the construction site.

“I totally did,” Pine confirms.

“You’re an asshole.”

“I guess I am.”

“He  _sounds_  Australian to me. What’s the difference, anyway?”

“Wow. I dare you to go back and say that to Karl.”

“No  _way_.” Karl, it turns out, is very touchy about his New Zealand heritage, and Zach is in no hurry to put himself in the firing line again.

Pine stops, and Zach bumps into him, has to grab at his waist so they don’t fall over. Their hard-hats clack together.

“Shadowing me is not a  _literal_  term, Quinto,” Pine snaps.

“Jeez, excuse me. Worried the gay might be catching, Princess?”

Zach is expecting some kind of escalation, but Pine just turns away to consult his clipboard. “We’re going up on the craney-thing now,” he tells Zach. “Think you can handle that?”

“I believe it’s called a tower crane, Princess.”

With a sigh, the guy looks up at Zach. “I’d appreciate it if you’d stop with the Princess thing. For now, at least.”

Zach thinks it over. He knows when to let go of a grudge, and if they’re really going up on the tower crane, it would be more pleasant to be stuck up there with someone who doesn’t want to throw him off. Besides, this guy has really pretty eyes. Zach has always been a sucker for blue eyes. “Alrighty then, Pine,” he says again. “No more Princess.”

“Why don’t we split the difference, and you call me Chris, since that’s my name.”

When Chris smiles, genuinely smiles without irony or animosity underlying it, his eyes crinkle at the sides and his nose scrunches. Zach can’t help smiling back, and holds out his hand.

“We should probably try this whole thing again. Nice to meet you, Chris. I’m Zach.”

Chris’s handshake is firm and friendly. Seems like he can’t hold a grudge long either. “I’m sorry about before,” he says easily. “I thought you were going to be – well, different. Most actors would totally lose their shit over what happened with Karl.”

Zach runs a hand through his hair, self-conscious. “Oh, uh. Well. It’s not like I’m some big-shot movie star.” He can’t interpret the expression on Chris’s face, but it resolves into equanimity.

“It’s something of a tradition to give the new guy a hard time on his first day. Do me a favor and don’t get me fired over it, okay?”

Chris is still smiling, but Zach wonders if there’s an undercurrent there. “Of course not. I can take a joke.”

“Okay, you ready for the tower crane? She can be a tough mistress.”

“Sure. Where’s the elevator?”

Chris gives him a pitying look and shakes his head. “No elevator. We climb up.”

Zach laughs, and then stops. “Omigod, please tell me you’re kidding.”

“If we don’t climb, who’s checking the crane structure for safety? No one, that’s who.”

“But it must be twenty stories tall! Or, like, a thousand steps!”

“You’re just picking numbers out of the air, aren’t you?”

“Then how many steps  _is_  it, Mr. Know-It-All?”

“I’ve honestly never counted. Seems like it would make the climb that much longer. This lady here is two-sixty feet tall and she lifts just under nineteen tons. Her horizontal jib reach is two-thirty feet.”

“That means nothing at all to me, you know that, right?” Zach grumbles. Chris hoists himself up on to the first ladder and looks over his shoulder at Zach.

“Being pissy will only make the climb longer. Hey, maybe  _you_  should be called Princess. Are you really afraid of a little exercise?”

Zach is outraged. “I do yoga, and I run, and I—” But Chris is already at the first platform. He leans over the side to look down with a grin.

“Come on, Hollywood. What are you waiting for?”

  
***

  
Halfway up, Zach pleads for a short rest. “I mean, this is hard work,” he gasps, downing half his water bottle before he takes another breath. “You know?”

“Yeah,” Chris says, lifting his face to the sun and closing his eyes against it, the light making his skin golden. “I know.”

“How long have you been doing this, man? You’re like a  _machine_.” He tries hard not to think about those habituated thighs bouncing up and down on top of him, his cock buried in that muscular yet fleshy—

“A while. I’m about two years into my apprenticeship. You’re lucky this girl has rest platforms. Some tower cranes don’t; it’s just metal bars and ladders all the way up. Those are kind of killer, even I’ll admit that.” He opens his eyes again and gives Zach a long up-and-down gaze, probably wondering at Zach’s state. Zach is sure he’s not at his Hollywood best right now – sweaty, panting, his deodorant working overtime. Chris, on the other hand, is barely out of breath.

He waves his water bottle at Chris. “You want some? I didn’t slobber too much.”

Chris shakes his head. “You might want to go easy on the water, buddy. No facilities up there.”

“Oh, fuck me. Really?”

“Sometimes they might haul a portable up, but most of the time not.”

“So what happens if you need to go?”

“You hold it in, or you trek down and up the ladder again. Or you can pee in a bottle. There are options. Just no pissing off the side, clear?”

“No golden showers from above: check.” Zach really, really wants to take another swig of water, but he doesn’t trust his bladder to hold out. He can’t remember the last time he was in a situation where he couldn’t just go to the bathroom if he needed. “How long are we up here?”

“Just a few hours. You ready?”

Zach tucks his water bottle back in his waistband. “Yeah,” he says miserably. “Let’s do it. I guess we’ll break at lunch, right? I can hold out on the pee thing till then if I’m desperate.”

Chris, above him now, pauses and looks back down. “Um. You brought your lunch up here with you, right?”

It takes Zach some time to form a reply that doesn’t consist solely of filthy curse words. “ _No_. No one told me I  _needed_  to _._ So now I’ll  _have_  to go down at lunch.”

“Oh, man. I’m sorry,” Chris says, real sympathy in his voice. When they reach the next rest platform, he helps Zach up. “But hey, if you can hold out for the bathroom, I’ve got enough food. We can share. And I usually leave some protein bars in the cabin, so if we’re lucky there should be one or two up there. Tomorrow you’ll know better. We all sort of forget these things – we don’t think about them, ’cause we do them every day.”

Zach wants to whine about low blood sugar, but there’s no point. Either he hauls ass back down all those ladders, grabs his salad and prosciutto on specialty whole-wheat focaccia, and has to start back up the ladders all over again, or he accepts Chris’s hospitality and remembers to bring his lunch with him tomorrow.  _And_  remembers that ‘just a few hours’ translates to something different in Chris Time.

He takes a deep breath. “It’s okay. At least I’ll have the experience to draw on for the movie, right? Let’s – let’s keep going.”

Zach doesn’t say much the rest of the climb, and it seems to help make it pass more quickly. The enticing view of Chris’s ass above him is also incentive to keep going, although he feels like a horse following a carrot he’ll never be able to eat.

At the top, though, once he takes in the city panorama, he breaks into a smile. The area they’re in has no close high-rises to block the scenery, and they have a bird’s eye view of the surroundings. There are some residential blocks to the east, and office buildings to the south, but all of them are lower than Zach is up here. He feels like a benevolent God looking down on Creation. To the north he can see the Hollywood sign shining in the mid-morning sun, and catches his breath. “Damn. LA looks awesome from up here.”

“Yeah, it’s like a reward every time I climb up. You’re lucky today – smog level is low. Some days it’s less pretty and more…yellow.”

Zach laughs at that, and dares to take another swig of water. It’s been a long time since he’s been on one of his uncle’s construction sites. He forgot how small they always made him feel, even now that he’s a fully grown adult.

“How’re you doing with the height?” Chris asks, as they walk the few steps to the operational cabin.

“I’m fine,” Zach says, surprised. “I hadn’t even thought about it.” Now that Chris has mentioned it, he holds tighter to the safety rail, but as long as he doesn’t look straight down, he’s not bothered by the height.

“Maybe you’re a natural for construction. So the cabin’s small, as you can see,” Chris says. “I’m not really sure what you had in mind…I mean, you could squeeze in with me, I guess, but yeah. Not much room.”

Zach gives him a close look. “So listen, I’m not entirely sure what your deal is with the gay thing—”

“I don’t have any issues with it.”

“Because it’s not like I’ve been checking you out or anything. If you’re uncomfortable sitting too close to me because I’m gay—”

“I’m gay.”

“What?”

“I’m gay, Zach.”

“Oh.” Zach is flummoxed. He’s usually able to get a pretty good read off people, and Chris didn’t ping at  _all_. Then again, maybe it explains the Princess nickname.

Zach rubs the back of his neck. “Well, since you’re gay, you should know that I was  _totally_  checking you out all the way up here. So maybe sitting in confined quarters together isn’t such a great idea.”

Chris chuckles cautiously. “You can watch outside for a while if you like. Here are some binoculars – you can have a look at the hand signals I use with Eric down below.”

“Hand signals? Wow, high-tech around here.”

“We have radios, too, but with the noise on-site, sometimes it’s easier to use hand signals. Just let me do this first.” Chris pulls Zach closer by his belt-loops, and Zach feels a tingle in his balls. “Okay, I need to harness you,” Chris tells him. “So you need to put your hands up?”

“Oh. Sorry.” Zach raises his hands in the air and lets Chris encircle his waist and chest with the harness and tighten it.

Chris pulls at the belt with three firm jerks to make sure it’s secure around Zach, fixes the long, loose end to the safety rail, and stands back. “All done. Your uncle would kill us if you fell off. This way, we’ll be able to fish you back up.”

“Great. Thanks. I’m feeling less good about the height, now,” Zach says, looking over the edge again.

“You’ll be okay. Just keep looking at me, don’t look at the ground.”

Keep looking at Chris? Done and done.

Chris puts his lunch and Zach’s water bottle into a container in the crane cabin, and then slides into the seat. The cabin is set slightly below the catwalk. He tips his face up at Zach, who sits cross-legged on the catwalk next to him. “Hold this for a second?” He hands out his hard-hat while he adjusts the radio head-set, and then replaces the hat. “Thanks, man. Okay, so you see that guy down there? His name’s Eric Bana, and he’s what we call my dogger. He’s the guy who sets the schedule of lifts for the crane, checks the safety of the loads, that kind of stuff.” Chris pauses and then asks, “Do you know anything about what we’re building here?”

“Nope.”

“Do you want to?”

Not particularly, but Zach is charmed by Chris’s gravelly voice, and is not opposed to hearing more of it. “I surely do. Hit me.”

  
***

  
By lunch break, Zach discovers that he’s starving, even though it’s only eleven. They make their way up the short jib, near the balance weight where the catwalk is a little wider, and sit down. The catwalk here is covered with plates instead of gridding, and the safety rails hold advertising boards on the outside, proclaiming  _Quinto Construction_. They sit with their backs leaning up against them, facing each other. If Zach doesn’t glance down the catwalk, it feels like he’s in the middle of the sky in an enclosed basket, alone with Chris.

Chris has let him take his safety harness off while they eat, for which Zach is grateful. “Tomorrow, I’ll bring you lunch,” he tells Chris, who splits a soggy ham and tomato sub with him, and hands him a protein bar. “To say thanks. I really appreciate this, man.”

“No need,” Chris says briefly. Zach has noticed that although Chris is animated when he talks about his work, he’s more reserved when it comes to talking about himself.

“There’s a total need. I make  _great_  sandwiches. So, Chris Pine: Tower Crane Operator. How’d that happen? You always wanted to go into construction?”

Chris chews, looks up at the sky. “I grew up in LA. My parents did a bit of TV acting back in the seventies, but they never made it big, so Dad went into building instead. I bounced around for a while when I was younger, even thought about acting for about a minute, but I didn’t pursue it, thank Christ.” He looks back to Zach. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…Anyway, I ended up in construction. Eric was my dad’s apprentice and then when I needed work, Eric said he’d take me on as his. I started out in bricklaying, then mobile and stationary cranes. I worked up to the tower. What about you? You a local?”

“Pittsburgh, represent,” Zach says, punching the air. “I was the total drama student stereotype in high school, and then I trained at Carnie Mellon. Moved out here about a year back, after graduation. My brother’s here too; he’s a photographer. I’m crashing with him till I find something regular and can get my own place. I have a part-time job at Emporio Armani, but it’s just for something to do while I wait for my big break.”

“Living off a trust fund?” Chris asks, too casually.

“No.” Zach is taken aback. “I don’t have a trust fund. I mean…I get an allowance, but it’s not – we’re not  _rich_ like that. My dad died when I was still a kid, and my uncle’s taken care of us since then. But there’s no trust fund.” At least, Zach doesn’t think there is. He’s never really thought about where the money comes from. It just appears regularly in his account.

“Damn. Sorry about your dad. I didn’t realize.”

Zach shrugs. “It was a long time ago.”

“What movies have you been in?” Chris is changing the subject, Zach can tell, but he’s not averse to it either.

“This and that. Mostly some support roles in TV and some bit parts in movies, but I have bigger plans. So, what happens after lunch?”

“After lunch, we’ll finish up Eric’s schedule, then we’ll go down and see if Karl has anything else for the day. I was thinking – you could try sitting in the cabin after lunch, if you like? I’ll still have to control everything, but you can see what it’s like to take instructions through the head-set.”

“That would be so awesome!”

Sitting in the cabin turns out to be creepy rather than awesome, because it’s completely clear except for the metal plating directly under Zach’s feet. Chris explains that it gives a wider view of the work, but all it does for Zach is make him feel nauseous, staring two-sixty feet down straight at the ground.

“You want to get out?” Chris asks. “I forgot how confronting it can be.”

Getting out would be admitting he’s a big fat coward, so Zach shakes his head. “Just give me a second.” Chris talks in a soothing voice about the controls while Zach does some deep breathing and gets his head to stop spinning. He starts to feel better, and then realizes that Chris has had a hand on his shoulder the whole time, friendly and comforting.

“Okay?” Chris asks, and Zach nods.

“I’m not gonna puke,” he says. Smooth.

Chris grins and removes his hand before giving Zach the head set. “Here you go. Ready for instructions?”

“As I’ll ever be.” But when Eric’s voice comes crackling through the radio, Zach shoots Chris a suspicious look.

“You there, mate?” Eric repeats.

“I’m here. So I take it you’re a New Zealander, too?”

Gales of laughter make Zach jerk the earpiece away until Eric calms down. “Princess pulling your leg, eh? Nah, mate, I’m Australian.”

“Really?”

“Ridgy-didge.”

Zach puts a hand over the mouth piece and whispers to Chris, “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

“I can translate,” Chris assures him. “Anyway, look at his hand signal. You remember what that one means?”

Chris is a good teacher, and Zach has a lot of fun that afternoon. Moving gargantuan loads and helping construct something much, much bigger than himself is satisfying, and reminds him of being a kid, playing with his Lego bricks and building plastic houses, buildings, ships. He’s starting to see the appeal in construction work.

Chris has to keep leaning into the cabin to press things and pull levers, and Zach enjoys the close-up view of his serious, focused eyes and the one kicky lock of hair at the back of his neck refusing to go in uniform direction. As the day grows hotter, Zach can start to smell him under the cheap scent of his deodorant. It’s too warm in the cabin, and both of them are sweating through their tees in patches. Chris’s white shirt turns translucent in places and Zach discovers, to his delight, the exact size and shape of Chris’s bellybutton.

None of it is doing much for Zach’s self-control, especially when Chris squeezes into the cabin next to him, picks up his hand, and wraps it around a lever. Chris leaves his hand on Zach’s, burning like a furnace, and Zach decides that jeans this tight are not going to work on-site. He squirms around in the chair, until Chris asks if something is wrong.

“Just hot.”

“Yeah, me too. We’ll be done in five anyway – do you want to wait outside for me?”

“I’ll be okay.” Standing outside with his crotch at Chris’s eye level is not going to help anything.

The climb back down is not as arduous – gravity helps – and Chris lets him take first go in the nearby port-a-potty when they reach ground level. Then Karl has them tidy up the day’s deliveries, moving brick pallets on a forklift into a storage shed. Zach wants to learn how to drive the forklift, but Chris shakes his head. “Leave it for now. I want to get out of here on time today.” Zach spends a half-hour directing Chris during reverses into tight spots, and three-thirty arrives before he can believe it.

“So, I’ll see you tomorrow, seven sharp?” he asks Chris. “You like prosciutto? For lunch, I mean,” he adds. “Because I also have some brie I need to use up, so I could do something with that.”

“Uh, sure, whatever. You don’t have to do that, though, man.”

“My pleasure. Thanks for today, and not just the lunch thing. I mean, thanks for helping me out. I feel like I’ve really learned something today.”

Chris looks pleased. “So, you heading home now?”

“Not sure. I have to call my brother to pick me up but he’s not free until five anyway.”

“There’s a bar I go to sometimes near here, after work. I thought I might head over. You wanna come?”

“Sounds fun. Should we ask the others?”

Chris gives a half-smile and looks away. “I don’t think it’s their kind of bar.” He hesitates. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, I want to come. Very much.” Sometimes it’s great to be an actor, because Zach has been able to perfect his Sizzling Look of Promise. Chris reacts very satisfyingly, taking a little swallow and nodding instant agreement.

They don’t even make it to the bar. Halfway through the dusty site car park, Chris says, “Y’know, I live pretty close,” and that’s all it takes for them to jump into his beat-up flatbed truck together and drive off.

  
***

  
Chris’s apartment is tiny, dark and hot, but that’s all that Zach notices before Chris latches on to him, pulling at his clothes.

“Bed?” Zach asks. Chris pushes him to the sofa and Zach collapses on to it. “Sofa works, too,” he mutters, lifting his hips to help Chris pull down his jeans.

“Sofa  _is_  the bed.”

“Do you wanna fold it out, or—”

“Zach.” Chris stops trying to yank Zach’s jeans over his work boots and looks at him. “It doesn't fold out. Are you going to have any more questions about my furnishings before we get down to this? No? Okay.”

So Chris sleeps on a regular sofa? Zach takes a covert glance around the room and realizes that it’s just that – one room. One room with a microwave standing on a bar fridge near the only window, which holds a decrepit-looking AC box. There are a lot of books stacked from the floors halfway up the walls on two sides of the room, and an antiquated television set balanced on a dresser. There’s one door in the wall opposite the front door, but it’s open and Zach can see from here that it’s a miniscule bathroom, not a bedroom.

The place is clean, though, and it’s totally livable. Totally. It's just that Zach lives in a spacious three-bedroom house with his brother out in Los Feliz, and he didn't realize Chris was – well, living like  _this_. He thought construction paid better.

“Don't do that,” he says, pulling away his feet. Chris is trying to unlace his boots and it doesn't seem right, all of a sudden, for Chris to be huddled over his work boots like that. “I mean, you don't have to do that for me. I can do it.”

Chris looks up with a smile. “I'm down here. Might as well. Unless you have some killer athlete's foot going on or something else I really don't want to know about.”

“Ew. No.” Zach slumps back in his seat. “Although, honestly? I could stand a shower.”

Chris shakes his head. “After,” he says, and makes a triumphant noise as Zach's boots finally come loose. The jeans follow, and then Chris kneels up between Zach's legs to kiss him again. “Been waiting for this all day.”

“All day?” Zach decides to help out, and starts pulling up Chris's tee, smiling at the now-familiar bellybutton. “You didn't seem to like me at all when I showed up.”

Chris fights for a second to get his shirt off, and plants his lips back on Zach's, somehow coherent around Zach’s tongue in his mouth. “Just because I thought you were gonna be a giant douchebag doesn't mean I could ignore the hotness factor.”

“Giant douchebag?”

Chris pulls back and tugs at Zach's shirt. “This. Off. And do you normally talk so much during sex?”

“Only when I'm being called a giant douchebag, I guess,” Zach says, trying to sound like he doesn't care.

“Hey, I didn't even know you then. I was being a giant douchebag too.”

“Please stop saying 'douchebag',” Zach begs.

Chris pauses. “I guess I jumped you pretty quick when we came in. Do you…are you not into this?”

Of course Zach is into it. The straining cotton of his Calvin Kleins is a dead giveaway, and most of his ample spare time at the moment is devoted to hooking up with hot, muscled, tanned guys exactly like Chris Pine.

Zach strips off his top and pulls Chris towards him again, sucking on his neck. Normally Zach likes things to be pretty sanitized, even with his club pick-ups. If he’s looking to score, he does it early in the night before the guys get  _messy_. But Chris tastes good despite the long day’s work, much better than he expected. Salty, with a sharp undercurrent, but not sour like the club boys, their skin spray-tanned and perspiring chemicals and drugs.

Chris tastes like sunshine, like honest work, like something strong and vital and—

“You’re gonna leave a mark,” Chris gasps, pushing him away. “No marks, okay? They’d give me hell at work.”

“Sorry.” He uses his tongue instead, licking all the delicious skin he can reach until Chris gets a hand into his briefs and closes it around his dick. “Yeah, jack me like that.”

“Good?”

Zach nods. “You ever fucked up on top of the crane?”

“Hell, no.” Chris leans in to give a gentle bite at Zach’s nipple.

“You can do that harder.”

Chris obliges, and then says, “I’ve thought about it, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Like today.” Chris pulls off Zach’s briefs. “Hang on.”

Zach gets to watch Chris walk shirtless across to the dresser and bend over to rummage around in a drawer. He comes back to the sofa with a rubber, making to kneel again, but Zach grabs at his hips and keeps him standing. “You still have clothes on,” Zach says. “Not fair. And there’s something  _I’ve_ been wanting to do most of the day, too.” He tongues at Chris’s navel, ignoring the surprised half-squeal from above.

“Hey, when you’re done frenching my bellybutton, I can take my jeans off,” Chris says eventually, but his fingers are clutching at Zach’s hair and his voice is unsteady.

Zach gives one final flick of his tongue and looks up at Chris as he unbuttons his waistband. “Tell me what you were thinking about today.”

“You.” Zach thinks he’s going to have to prompt again, but Chris just needs a breath. “When you first arrived and I thought you were going to be a dou– an asshole, so I was thinking about ways I could shut you up if you bugged me.”

“Oh, really?” Zach drawls, tugging down Chris’s jeans and boxers in one smooth movement. Chris’s dick is half-hard, plump and inviting over sizeable balls. Zach curls his tongue around the head and tastes the same tang as before, the same Chris Taste, but intensified. “You thought about shoving this in my mouth to shut me up?”

Chris runs a hand down Zach’s face. “I know it’s a bad cliché,” he says, “but go with it. My fantasies are pretty run-of-the-mill.” He gives a grin.

Self-awareness? Okay, then. Zach hasn’t encountered that for quite a while, and he didn’t even know he was missing it here in LA.

“But later,” Chris continues, “it changed. I really thought you were going to bitch all the way up the tower, but you sucked it up and –  _yeah_ , that’s good.”

Zach has gulped him down, still soft enough that it’s an easy deep-throat, and cups his balls with a hand. He pulls off for a moment, and Chris whines a protest. “Keep talking,” Zach says. “So we’re up on the tower, and—?”

“And you were so interested in everything I was telling you, but all the time I was wondering what it would be like to do  _this_. Zach. Please don’t make me talk anymore.”

Chris is like an iron rod in Zach’s mouth, the scent of him strong and exciting. Zach drags him down onto the sofa and rearranges them until Chris is underneath, panting and laughing and complaining that his jeans are caught up on his boots. Zach waits for a frustrating minute while Chris kicks them off, but stops him from trying to remove his socks. “That’s enough. We’re wasting time.” Chris groans his agreement.

“You taste amazing,” Zach tells him, nuzzling into his sack. It’s a good angle – he can hold Chris’s cock out of the way and jack it while he uses his mouth on these big, velvety balls. There’s something incredibly satisfying about the way they fit into his mouth and the luscious feel of them on his tongue. He noses further down, licks behind them to find more of that Chris Taste. It gets stronger the lower he goes, so he slides his arms under Chris’s legs to prop them up for better access.

“Wait,” Chris says, tensing up, and Zach raises his head. He knows what he must look like to Chris: hair messy and falling into dazed eyes, his cheeks and nose stained with a faint crimson flush, his lips wet and red and slightly parted. “Oh, God,” Chris says, but then looks determined. “No – wait. Sorry.”

“Why am I waiting?”

“You’re getting into reserved territory there,” Chris says, looking a little embarrassed. “It’s my rule. No butt-stuff first time round.”

Zach pouts. “But you taste so good.”

Chris chuckles and looks even more embarrassed, but happy. “That’s, uh, that’s good to know, but the rule stands. Sorry. I should’ve told you before we started—”

“But, so, you  _do_  bottom?”

“Yeah. But not on casual hook-ups. Too much hassle.”

“Fair enough. Any other rules?”

“I usually use condoms for oral, but we kind of blew straight past that one. You can blow me without a rubber if you like, but I prefer to use one on you. And no shooting on my face.”

Zach stares at him.

“What?”

“This conversation about what I  _can’t_  do has no right to be as erotic as it is. Can I suck on your balls some more while you tell me the rest of the rules?” Zach dives back in before Chris can reply.

“There aren’t really any more – fuck.  _Fuck_.”

“No shooting on your face,” Zach reminds him, pausing to spit on the cock in his hand. Chris’s pants increase. “So where  _can_  I come? Tell me about that.” He finds the right rhythm with his hand, the one that makes Chris strain his hips up high, until his balls are nudging at Zach’s waiting lips.

“I could turn over for you. You could come on my ass.”

“You said no butt-stuff.” Zach takes advantage of the pause to swap from balls to cock, suckling on the tip of it before slipping into his familiar pattern, throat relaxed as he works up and down on Chris’s dick in regular, easy motions.

“Shooting on my ass-cheeks, or in the small of my back, I’d allow that.” Chris has abandoned all pretense to composure now, his voice cracked.

Zach looks up at him, replacing his mouth with a fast-working left hand, using his right to knead behind Chris’s balls. “You’d  _allow_  that?”

Chris can’t look away from him, and Zach uses all his skill to project a narrative with his eyes:  _You’re talking like you’re in charge here, but we both know I could do anything I want to you right now, except I won’t because I_ totally _respect your boundaries and I really want the chance to get to the butt-stuff._

A look of astonishment passes over Chris’s face before his eyes squeeze shut and his mouth drops open, letting out a wail. He creams all over his stomach and chest. His groans turn into laughter, until Zach clambers up on top of him to kiss him.

“Can I do it like this?” he asks, breathless, and frotting gently against his abs and spent cock. “Am I  _allowed_?”

Chris sucks at his lower lip, pulling Zach’s hips close. “Yeah, come on. Get me all wet.” But he winces as Zach grinds against his softening dick.

“Sensitive?”

“Yeah.”

“But this is still okay?”

“Definitely.”

Zach shudders, and sinks his nose into Chris’s neck, smelling him and tasting him again with an open, gasping mouth while he ruts with an increasingly erratic tempo. It’s not enough friction, so Zach props himself up with one arm and presses his dick against Chris’s stomach with his other hand. The head of his cock plays over the nub of Chris’s bellybutton, which catches once, twice under Zach’s ridge before it sends him over the edge. He spurts several times and gives one last aching, blank spasm before he collapses onto Chris.

When the rushing in his ears subsides, he realizes that Chris is shaking with suppressed giggles. He grunts a question, and Chris curls a hand around the back of his neck.

“I’m sorry; I’m not laughing at you, not really. It’s just…do you have some fetish for my bellybutton?”

Zach snorts into the dip above Chris’s collarbone. “No. It’s cute, is all.”

“ _You’re_  cute.”

Their flesh is sliding and suctioning against each other and it’s starting to feel less sexy, more gross. “Seriously, can we shower now?” Zach asks.

“Sure. You go first.”

Zach is a little disappointed by that, because showering together after sex is one of his favorite things, but he accepts the rough towel Chris gives him and doesn’t bother to shut the door. “Can I watch you?” he asks, when he’s done, and Chris looks taken aback.

“I guess?”

“I don’t want to weird you out.”

“I’m not weirded out. But I’m not going to be doing anything, you know. Arousing.”

“You don’t have to be doing anything special to be arousing, Princess.”

Chris flips him the bird, but he does leave the shower curtain open so that Zach can see him from the couch. Zach sits in his briefs and nothing else, because the air is so close in the room. He finds his fingers straying back to his crotch when Chris turns around to douse his face under the stream of water and wash down his abs, because  _damn_ , the man has a fine ass. Zach definitely needs to get to the butt-stuff as soon as he’s allowed.

Chris gratifyingly just wraps himself in the towel afterwards and plonks down on the opposite end of the sofa. “So. Can you do me a favor and keep this on the down-low at work?”

“Not out?”

Chris makes a face. “More like they'd put up a banner and decorate the tower crane with streamers and balloons. My sex life is apparently the most interesting thing on-site.”

Zach leans forward, his interest sparked. “But you must have had some trouble here and there with jerks, right?”

“Of course, but the team now are all cool.”

“I gotta say, I was expecting a lot less acceptance on-site. Can you tell me about the not-cool times, if it’s okay? For research.”

“Sure, if you want.” Chris talks in an even tone for ten minutes, giving Zach a picture of the kind of discrimination he’s faced. Zach’s anger rises several times, even though Chris is matter-of-fact about the bullying and harassment.

“But that’s what I like about your uncle’s company. The HR provisions are really clear and fair, and the policies are  _followed_. Karl has always had my back, and he doesn’t put up with anything like that.”

“And yet they call you ‘Princess’.”

“Oh, that. That’s not really…yeah. I mean, it’s because of the gay thing in part, but they don’t mean it in a bad way and honestly? I think it’s mostly a symbol of how damn protective they all are of me, like I need saving from something, God knows what.” Chris bend over the end of the sofa until he can reach the bar fridge, and pulls them out a couple of beers. Zach appreciates the lift of the towel and the quick glimpse he’s afforded of Chris’s junk, until Chris catches him staring. “You’re insatiable,” he says with a grin, and Zach shrugs.

“You have a magnificent ballsack. So sue me.” He accepts the drink and follows Chris’s lead in flicking the bottle-top into the single sink. “So you were saying you needed saving from something.”

“They  _think_  I need saving,” Chris corrects him. “You know, one day Eric turned up to work with a box of puppies – he found them abandoned on the side of the road on his way in.”

“Ooh, what kind of puppies?” Zach asks, brightening.

“Shit, I don’t know. Cute ones?”

“ _All_  puppies are cute. I’d like to get a puppy. Or maybe a kitten. When I have my own place, though. Wait, this story doesn’t end badly, does it? I can’t deal with bad things happening to puppies.”

“No bad endings, I promise.  _Anyway_. So there’s this box of puppies and the team are all fighting over them and adopting them on the spot, until there’s only one little guy left, the runt of the litter I guess. And everyone looks at him with this dewy-eyed, pitying expression and I swear to God, it’s the same way they all look at me when they ask how my love life is doing.”

Zach laughs, hard, until he has to put his beer down on the floor or risk spilling it. Chris chuckles, too, but mostly at Zach.

“Okay,” Zach wheezes eventually, “I think I’m done. So who took the last abandoned puppy?”

“Oh, John. He’s a sap like that.”

“Have I met John?”

“Nah. He’s part of the IT unit. They have a separate office space, over the other side from the site office.”

“I guess Karl doesn’t want me associating with them,” Zach says, rolling his eyes.

Chris gets a strange, hesitant look on his face. “It’s probably for the best,” he says at last. “Besides, you’re here to learn about the operations and building side, right? IT are technically part of corporate.”

“I guess. So what’s the deal with the pay? How much do you make?”

Chris goes still, except for picking at the label on his beer. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable talking about that.”

Awkward. “Sorry. I just – I thought my uncle paid you guys a bit better than…this.” He waves his arm at the surroundings.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Chris is glaring at him now, really angry, and Zach knows he’s stepped way over a line.  _Butt-stuff possibilities dwindling_ , he tells himself. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m sorry.”

“Maybe I  _like_  living in a small place, Zach, you ever think of that?”

Zach shakes his head, not knowing what to say. But the storm passes as quickly as it gathered, Chris slumping back down on the sofa and rubbing the heel of his hand into his eye.

“Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to jump down your throat.”

“It’s okay. It’s private; I shouldn’t have asked.”

Chris sighs. “I haven’t been in the crane industry for long, but there’s the potential for a lot of money. It pays well because of the danger. But my dad – he had an accident a while ago, so he has a bad back and some other problems. I help out paying for his medical bills because his insurance doesn’t cover much. Doesn’t seem right for me to pay extra for rooms I don’t need when I could be helping out my parents.”

“That’s really decent of you,” Zach says sincerely.

“What else could I do?” Chris asks. “He’s my dad. But it’s lonely, sometimes, because I get…” He pauses, and then admits, “I get embarrassed about bringing guys back here, because they act like you, like I’m living in some rat-infested shithole.” Great. Zach feels even worse now. “I like it, though, most days,” Chris continues. “It simplifies things, living in one room like this. Keeps me focused on what matters. Not gonna lie, though, I wouldn’t turn down any extra hours at work. I could do with a little fat in the budget.”

“What was your degree in?” Zach asks, wanting to change the subject. “Engineering?”

Chris shakes his head. “I don’t have a degree, Zach. When I started with the company, I did a certificate to get qualified for crane ops. Besides, if I ever went to college, I wouldn’t want to do Engineering. Those guys are losers.”

Zach grins. “What would you major in?”

“English. I like to read, hence the books.” He indicates the two walls of books with his beer. “But you know, I don’t need that kind of debt just to prove I can string a sentence together.”

“You should’ve been a writer,” Zach suggests, unthinking, and Chris frowns again.

“What I do now is creatively fulfilling. Building something from the ground up, fitting it all together, starting to hone that instinct for what’s going to work and what’s not – I love it. I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t love it.” He looks at Zach. “What? Go on, ask. I can see you’re dying to ask something.”

Zach shrugs. “You’re obviously a smart guy. I just wondered what made you decide manual labor was the way to go – and  _not_  because I think people who do it are dumb.”

“I spend enough time cooped up inside without taking an office job. I don’t go out much, and I like I said, I like to read. A lot. Construction gets me out there in the open, gives me fresh air, exercise. Less navel-gazing.”

Zach can’t help dropping his eyes to the towel-edge, and then up again to Chris’s bright blue eyes.

“I think someone’s up for some navel-gazing right about now,” Chris says. “Correct?” He puts aside his beer and loosens the towel.

“Did I earn butt privileges yet?” Zach asks. Chris crawls over to him on the sofa, naked, shaking his head. “At least let me rim you.”

“You can rim my bellybutton.”

“I really don’t have  _that_  much of a thing for—”

“And I want to suck your cock until you’re down to involuntary motor function only.”

“Okay.”

  
***

 

 

Zach shows up five minutes early the next morning with a generous packed lunch for both of them, and is humming to himself when Chris arrives to sign him in for the day.

“You’re cheerful, for someone whose normal rising time is probably my afternoon break,” Chris observes.

“That is so insulting,” Zach says in mock protest as he signs the visitor-on-site register. “Making all these wild assumptions about my lavish and lazy lifestyle. I’ll have you know I’m a morning person. Besides, it’s your fault I’m cheerful. Yesterday was—”

Chris makes a short hissing noise and shoots him a warning look. Zach glances around. “No one’s nearby, Princess.”

“The walls have ears.”

“You’re so paranoid; I love it. It’s like I’m your dirty little secret.”

Chris rolls his eyes, but Zach doesn’t miss the way he pulls at the crotch of his jeans when he turns away. “Come on, Hollywood. Let’s have a look at Eric’s schedule for the day.”

Zach keeps humming while they walk across site, until Chris gives him a little shove with his shoulder. “Can you stop that? You’re so damn  _tuneless_.”

“It’s the dwarves’ song from  _Snow White_ ,” Zach protests. “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go?”

Chris has a half-incredulous, half-amused look as he stops Zach with a touch on the arm. “Please don’t say that to anyone else. They’ll think you’re making fun of them.”

“I’m not making fun.”

“I know; I’m just saying, other people might think you are.” Chris starts walking again, and Zach follows after a few paces. They reach the tower crane and Zach, thoughtful, watches Chris check the clipboard. “Christ, if I’d known you were going to sulk I would’ve let you keep humming,” Chris says at last, looking up at him.

“I’m not sulking, I’m  _thinking_.”

“About?”

“Last night you said you loved doing this, that you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t love it. And  _I_  thought it was fun, yesterday. I can see why you love it.”

Chris looks like he’s smothering a sigh. “Yeah, it’s fun. But it’s hard work, too, and it can be dangerous. And when the Foreman’s on your back about the schedule because the Project Manager’s on  _his_  back, it’s not so fun.”

“Karl gets on your back?” Zach asks, amazed. “But he  _likes_  you.”

“He likes me, Zach, but he’s still the boss. We don’t sit around and feel the brotherhood of the lower classes all day, you know?”

“I didn’t say that. I didn’t  _think_  that.”

“No. But sometimes you have a touch of the Tolstoy about you,” Chris says, grinning and shaking his head.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, the way you see us. Noble peasants with our virtuous labor, untroubled by the cares and woes of the aristocracy.”

Zach stares. “That’s really unfair.”

“Well. Sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” Chris looks over the clipboard once more and signs his initials at the bottom. “Come on, let’s climb our girl.”

They climb in silence. Zach is uncomfortably aware of his own thoughts, which run the gamut from  _Chris reads Tolstoy?_  to  _He thinks I’m really naïve_.

Once they reach the top, however, Zach’s dark mood disappears at the sight of the city spread out before him again, like he could reach out a hand and just take it. Chris smiles at Zach’s smile, and Zach feels like they’re sharing something, living a moment set up just for them by the Universe.

“You were right, before,” Chris says. “It’s fun.”

This time, Chris lets Zach move some of the levers all on his own, and give a few hand signals to Eric down below. Zach enjoys it again, the feeling of being useful, like he’s actually  _contributing_ – although he knows he’s probably just making more work for Chris to correct his mistakes. Chris doesn’t say a single negative word, though, and smiles at Zach’s earnestness.

“You could do this for a living, if acting doesn’t work out,” he says at one point, and Zach feels proud of himself.

“Thanks, man,” he says happily, and the lever promptly sticks, jolting the load in mid-air. “ _Shit_.”

“You’re fine – just try it again,” Chris says, resetting something by pushing a few buttons on the console. “Happens to the best of us.”

At lunch break, Chris’s hand strays down to pull at his crotch for the fourth time, not that Zach is keeping track or anything. “What is  _up_  with you?” he asks. “Is there some STD you forgot to mention?”

“No. Just, I keep thinking about yesterday and – and I have to rearrange.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Zach slots one of his hands into his waist band and strokes the skin of his own hipbone. “That’s really hot.”

“That’s not helping.” Chris blinks up at him from his cross-legged seat on the platform and has to hold up a hand against the sunlight. They’re eating near the counter-balance on the tower crane again, although Zach is standing while he rummages through his insulated lunch-tote for food.

“You should sit back, put your legs out. Give yourself some room.”

Chris huffs a laugh, but unwinds his legs and leans back on an arm. “That  _is_  a little better, actually.”

“Yeah, it is.” Zach slides his other hand up under his own tee, making it obvious that he’s pinching at his nipple.

“Quit it, Zach,” Chris says, but won’t look away. He licks his lips.

“You really want me to quit it? No one can see us behind the billboards.”

Chris gives a furtive look down the catwalk, which makes Zach want to laugh. The nearest building blocks are low to the ground, and the high-rises are miles away from here. The two of them are well-shielded by the  _Quinto Construction_  boards running along both sides of the catwalk.

“Why don’t you unzip?” Zach suggests. “Get comfortable.” Chris jerks his neck back to stare at him. He looks like he’s trying to make up his mind. “Come on, no one can see us. And if someone comes up we’d hear them before they arrive, right?”

Chris stays quiet, but it’s easy to read the desire on his face.

Zach kneels again, and leans in towards him. “It’s not like I’m gonna bend you over the rail and fuck you, even though I know you’d like that.” Chris groans and pulls down his fly. “I think they’d notice  _that_ , down below. But if you just get yourself off nice and quick, no one will see. Except me.”

Chris sucks on his lower lip, looking determined. “Okay, but you have to look out for me. Tell me if anyone’s coming up.”

“I will, I promise. Come on, let me watch you. Show me how you do it.”

At first, Chris tries to keep his jeans up over his hips, but he can’t get his hand moving fast enough, and Zach can’t see anything. “Pull them down,” Zach tells him. “It’ll be quicker, anyway.”

Chris gives his package one last reluctant squeeze before leaning back on his elbows and pushing his jeans and boxers halfway down his butt. That’s better. Zach can see his cock lolling to the side, just as fat and pink as he remembers. Chris’s hair shines with red-gold lights in the sunshine. He pulls his shirt up above his nipples and roughly rubs a thumb over them.

“Lovely,” Zach murmurs. “Now give me a show.”

Chris props himself up on one arm and looks at Zach while he jacks his cock, stopping for just a moment to spit liberally into his palm and then back to it like he’s frantic to finish.

“You look incredible. Don’t explode too fast, I want to make some memories for myself here.” Zach smirks at the noise Chris makes.

“Say stuff,” Chris begs.

“You want to hear what I’ve been thinking?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Chris is gasping for air now, his back arched. “Make it dirty. And – and  _mean_.”

Zach crawls over beside him until his mouth is right next to Chris’s ear. “You sucked my dick like you were desperate for it yesterday. I bet you’re a fantastic fuck, aren’t you? One of those guys who can’t get enough of it, no matter how hard your ass is pounded or how much it hurts, you just beg for more, like a good little cockslut.”

Chris freezes on the last word, and Zach thinks he’s gone too far, but one glance down nixes the idea. He sees the first splash hit Chris’s chest, and watches, transfixed, as Chris milks himself until those big, beautiful balls must be thoroughly drained. Even then, Chris can’t let go of his cock, rolling it under his palm gently until he gives one last, long groan, and drops his hand to his side.

“I need tissues.”

Zach scrambles to the lunch bag, bringing out several paper napkins and handing them over. Chris cleans himself up with a few unenthusiastic swipes of paper towel.

“Yeah,” he says. “We really shouldn’t have done that.”

Zach understands the words, but he’s still caught up in his own fog of sexual desire. “That was so fucking hot.”

“It was,” Chris admits, pulling up his jeans.

Zach’s balls are aching. “You think you could stay there for a second, let me shoot on you? Or just look at you while I jack off?”

Chris gives him a wary look. “Later, okay? At home.” He pulls down his shirt.

Zach takes a deep breath. “Sorry. Sure. Just give me a second to calm down.”

Chris bends his knees up and leans forward over them, hooking his hands around his ankles. “I just…I really like this job. And I really need it,” he says to his boots.

Chris’s forlorn attitude, and remembering that his uncle employs the guy, kills Zach’s boner as effectively as a bucket of ice water. He sits down opposite Chris again. “You’re right. We won’t do anything like that again, not on-site anyway. But…definitely at home.” He can see Chris’s smile return, his eyes crinkling. He reaches out a foot to kick at Chris’s ankle. “And here you told me all your fantasies were run-of-the-mill. Was that okay, the stuff I said?”

“Yeah.” Chris nods, and he seems shy, but not reticent. “Thanks.”

“You should come round to mine for dinner tonight.”

“God, Zach, you’ll be asking me to wear your letter jacket next.” But Chris is still smiling. “What did you bring for lunch, anyway? I could eat a horse.” He grabs his water bottle and gives his hands a cursory rinse under a splash of water.

“I went with prosciutto and chargrilled vegetables for me and chicken salad for you. You didn’t seem keen on brie.”

“Don’t you like anything normal? Like just a PB and J?”

“Sure, but where’s the fun in that?” Zach hands over half the chicken salad on sourdough and Chris takes it gratefully.

“You really didn’t have to,” he says again, but he wolfs it down so fast that Zach hands him over the second half before he’s more than a few bites into his own lunch.

“Chris, you know…I mean, you know I’d never tell anyone about anything. I would never mess things up for you.”

Chris screws up the greaseproof paper that held his sandwich and clenches it in his fist. “Yeah, I know. It would be pretty hard to explain your part in it.”

Zach is feeling worse by the minute. “Not because of that. I wouldn’t rat you out, you know? I don’t want you to think of me as – as a spy, because I’m not. I’m just like you here.  _Less_  than you, actually, ’cause I don’t get paid or anything.”

Chris puts his sunglasses back on and leans his chin on his bicep, looking out towards the Hollywood sign. “You’re not less than me, Zach, but you are different. It’s okay, though, don’t freak out. I wanted to do it. I’ve been having a hard time thinking with my brain the last couple of days.” He looks back and smiles, but Zach can see, even under the sunglasses, that his eyes aren’t crinkling.

  
***

  
Joe is out at his girlfriend’s place that night, and Zach uses the opportunity to cook up spaghetti marinara, garlic bread and makes a green side salad. He wants to bake dessert too, but Chris demurs, saying he’s eaten too much already.

“I should get going, anyway.” They’re sitting on Joe’s long, expensive suede couch at opposite ends, ankles entwined where they meet in the middle.

“Stay.”

“We both have to be up early.”

“Stay, and I can wash your clothes and throw them in the dryer overnight. We can fuck and go right to sleep and be up bright and early in the morning. And – bonus points – you get to sleep in a real bed for the night. Come on, picture it: feather pillows,  _great_  mattress, all the duvets you can handle—”

“Why is it,” Chris interrupts, “that I’m thinking  _you_  think you have a shot at butt privileges?”

Zach grins, sits upright on the couch and then pounces on him. “I have to say, plowing your ass has definitely crossed my mind about every thirty seconds since you walked in the door. But it’s cool if we keep it to suck-and-tug. Come on, stay with me. I love sleepovers.” He nuzzles into Chris’s neck, savoring his taste again, and then presses their foreheads together.

“What if I want something different?” Chris asks, his tone dropping into that gravel register that makes Zach’s dick jump to attention.

“Like what?”

“Like maybe I want you to eat me out until I’m begging for a fuck. Maybe I want you to call me your cocksucking whore and make me choose whether you finish in my ass or in my mouth. Maybe something like that.”

Zach opens his own mouth then and makes a noise, but nothing intelligible.

“Perhaps I should take my clothes off so you can wash them?” Chris asks, all innocence.

Zach stumbles off the couch, pulling him by the hand to the laundry where Chris, laughing, refuses his attempts to help undress.

“I should really shower if we’re gonna…if you’re gonna use your mouth, as per my suggestion,” Chris says, once he’s naked. “I’ve been sitting in my own sweat all day.”

“Oh, we’re doing it,” Zach says immediately. And damn if he doesn’t kind of want to see if the taste that’s been driving him crazy on Chris is intensified by his sweat. Still – he wants to make sure Chris feels completely comfortable. “If you have to shower, I  _suppose_  you can. I need to, too.”

“Alone,” Chris insists.

“Oh, my God.  _Fine_. Take the main bathroom, or my en suite. I’ll go shower in Joe’s.”

Chris’s eyes narrow, but Zach barely notices. “Three bathrooms, huh? Okay. Well. I guess I’ll take your en suite, since I can pick. Can you show me where your room is?”

“Yes, but you have to walk in front of me so I can watch your ass.”

Chris snorts, but lets Zach steer him by holding his shoulders, down the corridor into the bedroom. Zach loves his bedroom. It’s full of light and the furniture is streamlined and modern, the room clean and spacious. He notices Chris staring, but pushes him insistently to the bathroom.

“There are guest towels on the second rack,” he says. “And feel free to use whatever products I have in there.”

Chris looks into the shower cubicle. “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass on the cardamom and ginger body wash. Do you have  _soap?_ ”

“You can use my face soap bar,” Zach says impatiently. “It’s right there, in that tray. You set?”

Zach showers as fast as he can, although he makes sure he’s thorough. Chris’s clothes finish in the eco-wash cycle as he’s padding past the laundry, so he throws them in the dryer and then heads back to his bedroom. Chris is still in the en suite, so Zach takes the time to set the mood. He turns on the wall-fixed reading lights on either side of his bed rather than the overhead track lighting, and sets out the lube and a generous handful of rubbers on the nightstand. For a moment he considers music, but it seems over the top, so he arranges himself in the bed and waits in silence.

Chris emerges eventually, wrapped in a fluffy white towel with still-wet hair.

“At last. All clean?” Zach asks from the bed, turning back the covers invitingly.

Chris takes another look around the room. “Yeah, all clean. This is your bedroom? It’s bigger than my whole place.”

“Your place is fine,” Zach says, but what he’s thinking is,  _Quit talking and get over here so I can finally get my tongue on your asshole._ “Come on, come to bed. It’s getting late.”

“Are my clothes—”

“They’re in the dryer.”

“Thanks.”

Chris sits awkwardly on the side of the bed, still in his towel, and makes no move to get under the covers.

“What’s wrong?” Zach asks, but Chris doesn’t reply. Zach slides up behind him and winds his arms around Chris’s cool, damp chest. “You okay? We don’t have to do butt-stuff if—”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

Another moment of silence, and Chris says, “I’m feeling a little out of place. Maybe a little out of my depth. It’s like…you’re a star, Zach, and you’re rich, and I’m just some poor blue-collar guy you only met because you were slumming it.”

Zach’s heart beats faster as he tries to think of something to say. “That’s not true. At  _all_ ,” he says eventually. “I am so far from being a star that I’ve thought about quitting, several times. I’m only in this room, and this house, because of my family, and I only have money because my family is supporting me, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay them.”

“Oh, you will,” Chris says softly. “You’re going to be huge. I can tell.”

“Is that really how you see me, like I think I’m  _lowering_  myself to be with you?”

“No. I don’t know. I don’t think this whole thing…” Chris trails off, but Zach stays where he is, hugging him, wanting him, feeling bad for him. After a while, Chris puts his hand over Zach’s wrist and gives a squeeze. “I’m kind of freaking out.”

“Lie down with me. No sex, just – lie down with me and let me cuddle you for a while.”

They’re both naked, curled up against each other, Chris playing little spoon, but Zach doesn’t feel the least inclination towards fucking. All he can think is that he’s somehow messed up, that he’s stomped all over whatever fledgling connection he’s made with Chris over the last few days.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel bad,” he says helplessly into Chris’s neck, and Chris lets out a long, sad breath.

“It’s not you. It’s me. I should throw in the towel and just admit it: I’m the abandoned puppy.”

“That’s bullshit. You’re doing the best you can. You’re doing  _way_  better than I would in the same circumstances. And money doesn’t  _matter_ , anyway.”

“People only ever say that when they have enough of it.”

“I think your life is much more genuine than mine. The way you work so hard and appreciate everything you have – it’s cool.”

"Zach,” Chris says, and his voice is tired. “You don’t get it. It’s not cool to be poor. It’s not fun. It’s definitely not character-building. And even though I made a choice to live this way and help out my dad, it’s not like my other choice was ‘be amazingly rich’ and I just turned it down.”

Zach blinks into the darkness for a while. “You said there was potential for money in what you’re doing.”

“The future just seems so far away, and there’s no guarantee. There are never any guarantees.” Chris sounds wearier than Zach has ever heard him.

They say nothing more, and Zach drifts into an uneasy sleep.

  
***

  
The next morning is uncomfortable and quiet, and as Chris drives them in to work they say barely a word to each other. They spend the morning on the forklift, and Chris unsuccessfully tries to teach Zach how to drive it. “Maybe I should just take over for now,” he says eventually. “Take your break, and then I’ll find something else for you to do.”

The morning is really boring, as far as Zach is concerned, but he doesn’t complain. At last, Chris tells him they’re due up on the tower again, and he cheers on the inside. But Eric catches them before they mount the first ladder, and asks Chris to get some vital information from IT. At least, that’s what Zach gleans from Eric’s instruction: “Karl’s carrying on like a pork chop about the cable specs, so get over to our IT whiz and find out what’s what.”

Zach follows Chris across the building site to another demountable set up in the same fashion as the site office. Chris’s phone buzzes just as they reach the door.

“It’s Eric,” he says. “Must be some more pork choppery going on.”

“What does that even mean?” Zach asks, mystified.

Chris quirks a small smile. “You go on in; I’ll just be a minute.”

As soon as he walks inside the IT office, Zach feels like a butterfly pinned to a backboard. Two sets of unfriendly eyes regard him – a man and a woman, both with fingers paused over keyboards. The woman resumes her furious typing first, turning her head as though she’s made a decision to ignore Zach’s entire presence. The guy, on the other hand, stares straight at Zach.

“Who are you?”

“Hi, you must be the IT whiz. I’m Zach.”

“Really?” the guy asks. “I  _must_  be the IT whiz? Because I’m Asian, right? This is because of the whole Asian thing? Wow. I am so embarrassed for you, man.”

“Oh, my God, no, I’m sorry. No, it’s not the—I mean—no.” Zach blushes and looks at the woman sitting at the desk, hoping for some help.

“Not the Asian thing,” she says thoughtfully, still typing and staring at her screen. “So it’s the penis thing? You think only guys work IT?”

“ _No_ ,” Zach splutters.

“Ignore them,” Chris says, coming in behind him. “And you two need to give him a break. This is his third day, so your window for ridicule is over.”

“You spoil all our fun, Princess,” the woman says, and the look she gives Zach is no more friendly than before. “I’m Zoë Saldana.  _I’m_  the IT whiz.”

“It really wasn’t the penis thing,” Zach says in a low voice while he shakes her hand.

“John Cho,” says the man. “Assistant to the IT Whiz.”

“So – you  _are_  in IT.”

“Yes. But not because I’m Asian.”

“And not because of his penis, either,” Zoë adds. “So what can we do for you two?”

Chris takes off his hard-hat and wipes his brow. “Eric sent us over about the specs for the cabling. Karl’s going nuts for some reason. You finished your recommendations?”

Zoë says something that Zach doesn’t comprehend at all – something about optic fibers and the pound for pound pressure exerted by concrete slab – and he turns to John instead, hoping to improve his first impressions.

“So what does the Assistant to the IT Whiz do, exactly?”

John swings around in his chair and kicks his feet up on the desk. “Coding and coffee runs, mostly. It’s pretty chill. You know what I hear is even more chill? Acting.”

“You’re right,” Zach says, leaning on his desk. “Acting probably has even more coffee runs than IT.”

“How’s it going with Princess?”

“Fun, actually. I could totally get into construction.”

John laughs like he’s made a side-splitting joke. “Yeah, I bet,” he says. “You know, I could use some help on the coffee run, if Chris can spare you.”

Zach glances over. Chris is deep in conversation with Zoë, but he takes a moment to say, “You go do that, if you like. Karl wants to talk to me about the roster next week and lunch break is due in fifteen anyway. I’ll meet up with you when you get back.”

The coffee run is over quickly – John knows the barista well enough that all he has to do is nod and he’s served up four espresso shots and two enormous lattes. “Chasers,” he explains. “Although I can only handle one espresso shot. Zoë downs them like tequila. It’s something to behold.”

Zach orders an Americano and then wonders what Chris might like. John doesn’t know, or isn’t telling. Zach figures that another Americano is a safe choice.

The coffee shop is just opposite the site, but they have to wait at the lights to cross. “So, what’s the deal with Chris?” Zach asks. “Do you know him well?”

John studies the red light. “Well enough. He doesn’t have a ‘deal’. Why do you ask?”

The workers on-site are protective of friends and staff, whether they’re in ops or corporate, Zach notes. “Research,” he says to John. “That’s why I’m here. To get to know him.”

“In the biblical sense?”

Zach nearly crushes his Americanos. “ _Excuse_  me?”

“There’s been some talk around the place,” John replies, looking at him now.

“That’s nobody’s business.” Zach is flushing, but he can’t figure out whether it’s anger or embarrassment.

“Maybe, maybe not. But you know whose business it definitely isn’t? Your uncle’s.”

“Whoa. Are we seriously having a ‘what are your intentions’ conversation?”

“Not at all. Obviously I’m not making myself clear. This is the ‘I’ll cut your balls off if you hurt him’ conversation.”

Zach takes a long, slow sip of coffee and lets the scalding liquid burn away the protests rising out of him. “I’ll do my best,” he says at last. “And I would definitely never say anything to my uncle.”

The light changes and John starts walking. “I guess that will have to do,” he says. “For now.”

“No one seems to like my uncle very much.”

“No one knows your uncle, Quinto, and no one cares either. What we  _do_  like is Chris. And our jobs.”

“I’m just an actor,” Zach says. “I’m not here for your jobs. I’m just researching.”

He doesn’t miss the contemptuous curl of John’s mouth, but he doesn’t understand it.

  
***

  
Chris is not in the site office, and it takes Zach a few minutes to find him near the tower crane. He gives an awkward wave with one of the coffees and thrusts it at Chris when he reaches the crane.

“I got you this, although it’s probably cold by now. Americano. I also got chewed out by John. Apparently people are talking about us.”

Chris puts the coffee, untasted, on a nearby crate.

“Dammit, I left lunch in the office fridge,” Zach groans. “Wait up, I’ll just be a second.”

Chris shoots out a hand to stop him. “Don’t worry about it. I already ate. I have to get back up the tower.” He puts his sunglasses on.

“What are you talking about? You ate your focaccia already?”

Chris sets his mouth. “I got something with Zoë.”

“But we  _always_  eat lunch together. And besides, I’m not  _allowed_  to climb the tower on my own, so you’ll  _have_  to wait.” Zach sounds whiny even to his own ears.

“I was thinking you should shadow Eric this afternoon instead. See what it’s like from the ground.”

“What the hell, man? You prefer a latte or something?”

Chris’s fingers fly off Zach’s arm as though he’s been stung. “Just go with Eric, okay? I need to get some actual  _work_  done instead of babysitting you.”

A million snarky replies fly to Zach’s mind, but he tries to bite his tongue. “What the fuck is the problem, Chris? Have I done something wrong?” But Chris is already walking away from him towards the crane. “I’m not going to jump you up there, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Zach says, his voice rising.

Chris whirls around. “The problem is so much more than that, you – you—”

“You  _what_?”

“Listen,” Chris hisses, coming closer again. “I’m not your fucking  _pet_. I don’t want you bringing me lunch and making me dinner and buying me coffees and, Jesus, giving me a  _bed_  to sleep in like it’s an amazing treat because I’ve been a good boy and aren’t I lucky and aren’t you fantastic and kind and—”

“Have you lost your mind?” Zach asks, amazed.

“My hours went up.”

“What?”

“My goddamn hours went up, Zach.”

“Well…yay? You said you needed more hours.”

Chris pulls off his sunglasses and stares at Zach fiercely. “Yeah, and I got them. Right after I conveniently mention to you that I was looking for more of them, and oh yeah – right after I start sucking your dick. I don’t need your favors,  _Mister Quinto_. I don’t need special treatment. And I sure as shit don’t need you taking care of me.”

He stalks off, but Zach follows him this time, still pathetically clutching his lukewarm Americano. “ _Wait_. Chris – wait for me. I just need to grab my hard-hat and I’ll come up with you and we can sort all this out.”

“Leave me alone.” Chris is up the first two ladders before Zach even reaches the base of the crane.

“Just  _wait_  for me, or Karl will kill me if I climb alone.” Chris ignores him, and Zach loses his temper. “So what the fuck am I supposed to do, Princess? Stand at the bottom and yell for you to let down your golden hair?”

Chris pauses on the rest platform and looks down at him, furious. “I should’ve trusted my first impressions,” he says, before continuing up the tower.

It takes Zach a few seconds to figure it out, but when he does, he bellows upwards, “I am  _not_  a giant douchebag!”

“Douchebag or not, put on your fucking hard-hat, Hollywood,” Karl snarls in his ear. Zach jumps, and then winces when Karl bangs a helmet firmly on his head. “And why aren’t you up there with him?”

“He doesn’t want me.” Karl raises an eyebrow, and Zach amends, “…to be up there with him. He said I should shadow Eric instead this afternoon.”

Karl looks up to where Chris is half-way to the top of the tower. “Eric’s still at lunch. Why don’t you come along with me to the site office? I need to have a little chat with you.”

Zach swallows and tries to smile. “Sure thing.” He has a few moments to try to calm his wild heart and collect himself as they walk back over to the office. _Someone saw us yesterday. Someone saw us and Chris is going to get fired and it’s all my fault because I’m a terrible person with an uncontrollable sex drive and—_

“Take a seat.” Karl waves a hand and sits himself behind the desk, looking as relaxed as always. “How’s it working out with Princess? If he doesn’t want to play, I can have a word with him.”

Zach shakes his head. “No, he’s been fine. He’s been  _great_.”

“I’m glad to hear it. But it makes me wonder – if he’s been so  _great_ , why have you been bothering my other workers?”

“Bothering your other workers?”

Karl leans forward on the desk, arms folded. “John and Zoë complained about you. Said you were interrupting their work and bugging them to answer your questions, that you wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

Zach gapes at him. “Those  _assholes_.”

“ _Have_  you been bothering them?”

“I never did anything to them! I just went with Chris into their office and – and then John  _asked_  me to go on a coffee run.”

“Actors are not popular among my folk,” Karl says. “We tend to see a lot of them, because of your uncle. He likes to hire out his sites to studios that need to shoot construction for background or establishing shots, and we also have the occasional actor, like yourself, who comes on-site for research. Generally they tend to be – well, perhaps Princess described it best. Giant douchebags.”

Zach feels indignant, but just nods. The conversation seems to be steering away from any  _And by the way, please don’t sex up my staff on the equipment_ comments, and that’s a good thing.

“Usually I try to pair those actors up with Chris, because he’s a bit more tolerant of the ‘creative spirit’ than most of us.” Zach can hear the quote marks in Karl’s voice. “He’s also passionate about his work, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. And he’s a good teacher, even when the actors themselves are too dumb to…Let’s just say, some of them have made pretty poor representations of our work on the big screen. Lots of stereotypes.”

“My uncle’s in construction,” Zach breaks in, exasperated. “I know more than the average douchebag, and I want to be respectful about your profession. That’s why I’m  _here_.”

“The fact that your uncle is the company owner is not something that works in your favor, Zach.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.” Zach slumps back and rubs a hand over his face. “I swear to God, I wasn’t bugging John and Zoë, okay? They had it in for me the moment I walked into their space.”

“I’m going to give you a hypothetical,” Karl says. “Let’s pretend, for a moment, that you work construction and you have a couple of friends in the regular crew – let’s call them Tom and Chloe. You don’t have a great reputation as far as your love life goes. Your colleagues think that your boyfriends – because in this hypothetical you’re a gay man, so you’ll really have to stretch your imagination here—”

“Hah-freaking-hah.”

“—your colleagues think that your boyfriends have been terrible choices, that you’re making do with whatever comes your way just because you’re lonely. One day, you fall for an actor who’s on-site to study up a bit on construction. This actor strings you along – wines you, dines you, even tells you he’ll take you to the premiere of the film. Tom and Chloe, meanwhile, think he’s bad news and that you’re going to get your heart broken. And what do you know, Tom and Chloe are right. Once the actor’s done with you, you never hear from him again. He never returns your calls. He never takes you to the premiere. You never see him again, except on the big screen, where he makes a complete mockery out of the work you’ve decided to devote your life to doing, playing it dumb for laughs.”

“That is  _not_  me,” Zach interrupts.

“No, genius. It’s not you. Shut up; I haven’t finished.”

“It’s not – oh. Oh.”

“So after that, you retreat into yourself a little more, stop going out with Tom and Chloe, stop going out anywhere, except to work, and when you’re there, you’re distant. Tom and Chloe are upset, and want to help you, but you won’t let them.”

“And then one day, another actor shows up on-site,” Zach says. “Yeah. I see.”

“This is all completely hypothetical, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Just something to think about.”

Zach looks down at his jeans. On the streets of LA, and in clubs and over liquid lunches and at auditions, they’re perfect – skinny as fuck, so tight they just about advertise his exact dimensions; a second, fashionable skin over his long Hollywood legs. “Thanks,” he says soberly. “And hypothetically, how might this second actor go about sucking up to Tom and Chloe?”

“I’m no expert,” Karl says, “but in my experience, few people can resist baked goods.”

Zach takes a breath, and asks, “Do you have a dog?”

“Run that by me again?”

“A dog. Did you take one of those puppies Eric brought on-site?”

Karl gives a surprised shout of laughter. “Princess told you about that? Yeah, I took one. She’s great. The kids love her.”

“Okay, well – and I’m not trying to start an argument here – but Chris, he’s not helpless. He’s not an abandoned puppy, and he’s tired of being treated like one.”

Karl studies him for a moment and then gives a nod. “Understood. And speaking of Chris – what’s up his ass?” Zach pales, and Karl rolls his eyes. “ _Figuratively_  speaking. What’s his problem with you today?”

“He seems to think I pulled strings to get him more hours next week. He’s kind of touchy about money, or – or maybe he’s not, maybe I just seem like a soulless capitalist to him—”

“I’m going to stop you there, Hollywood. Philosophize on your own time. Chris has more hours next week because the alternate tower crane operator is taking time off. So, I suggest you go home for the afternoon, and let me see if I can calm a few ruffled feathers around the place.”

  
***

  
Zach turns up twenty minutes early the next morning, with a huge box of assorted muffins and donuts. Chris is early, too, and Zach wonders if they both had trouble sleeping. Chris gives him a sheepish look as he signs them both in to work.

“I, uh. I owe you an apology. A big one.”

“You’re forgiven. Just a misunderstanding. Have a donut.” Zach offers him the box, and Chris looks overwhelmed at the array for a moment before choosing a maple bear claw.

“Did you buy the whole bakery?”

“Well, I’m looking to make a whole lot of friends today, so I figured I would need as much sugar as possible to back me up. Apparently I’m a giant douchebag?”

Chris smiles around his claw. “Maybe not  _giant_.” He does a double-take at Zach. “You got new jeans?”

“I figured these were more appropriate.” Zach spent yesterday afternoon sourcing jeans that, in his opinion, are way too baggy, but are similar to those he’s seen on-site, and on-Chris.

“Is this you being Method?” Chris asks, his eyes crinkling.

“Maybe. Are John and Zoë in yet?” At Chris’s nod, Zach asks, “Can you come with me to present my peace-offering to them? I don’t want them to take the opportunity to kill me and concrete my body in the foundations.”

“They can be scary,” Chris concedes. “And sure, I’ll come.”

“What did you do, sprinkle laxatives on them instead of powdered sugar?” John sneers on their arrival, although Zach doesn’t miss the way his eyes light up when he sees the blueberry muffin.

“No, because I’m not a cartoon villain. Chris has already had one. You want me to have one too, to prove it?” He hovers a hand over the blueberry muffin, and John snatches at the treat.

“Fine. I’ll trust you for now.”

Zoë takes a simple cinnamon donut without comment and places it in the exact center of a napkin next to her keyboard.

“I’m sorry I bothered you yesterday,” Zach says to them, and John chokes on his muffin. Zach makes sure his face radiates sincerity, even though Chris’s bewildered expression makes it difficult.

Zoë narrows her eyes. “Really,” she says flatly.

“Yep.”

John is still coughing. Without looking at him, Zoë pushes his latte closer to his hand, and John grabs it to take a grateful swallow.

“Thank you for the donut,” she says to Zach, and he figures he’s been dismissed as she goes back to looking at her computer screen. John’s hacking cough has subsided into forceful throat-clearing, although they can still hear him as they leave the office.

“I can’t even tell – does she hate me more, or less?” Zach asks, as they amble back to the break area to distribute the rest of the donuts.

“Maybe you’re back to baseline. Do I want to know what that apology was about?”

“Probably not.”

The rest of the food disappears rapidly. Zach sees Eric stuffing several muffins into a paper bag for later, and hides a smile. Even Karl takes something, although he also breaks up the gathering with a reminder about the schedule. “Come on, you lazy bastards, or you’re all staying late, and not on overtime.”

The crowd disperses, grumbling, although Chris hangs back with Zach. They’re both uncertain, busying themselves with tidying the area and wiping their hands while they wait for stragglers to leave.

“So,” Zach says, once they’re alone.

“So.”

Screw it, he might as well rip off the band aid. “Do I get to be with you today?”

“You’re sure you still want to?” Chris asks, finally looking Zach in the eye.

“Of course, if it’s okay with you.”

“I don’t know how much more help I’m going to be to you. You actually paid attention when I was telling you stuff the last few days, so I think you’ll be able to fake it convincingly enough on film.”

“Oh, there’s still  _lots_  of stuff I don’t know. Like, why is the tower crane a girl to you? How is it not an enormous phallic symbol?”

Chris snorts. “She’s a girl because climbing a gigantic cock every day would  _not_  put me in the mood for work.” They start walking together towards the crane, and Zach feels lighthearted.

“Does she have a name?”

“Maybe.”

“Tell me. Come on. Pleasepleaseplease?”

“You can’t tell anyone, and you can’t make fun of me.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Delilah.”

“ _Delilah?_ ”

“Remember, you promised, Zach!”

  
***

  
The remaining days fly by, each of them fun and interesting. Zach brings Chris lunch every day after okaying it with him, and improves his performance on tower-climbing. The rest of the crew say hello and goodbye to him, and don’t seem to resent his presence. Zach does his best to behave and only speak when he’s spoken to. John warms up to him enough that he brings Zach and Chris a couple of Americanos on one of his morning coffee runs, but Zoë remains, if not openly hostile, frosty. She speaks in monosyllables when she has to speak to Zach at all.

Every afternoon, they go back to Chris’s place and get each other off with mouths, hands…bellybuttons, although Zach still doesn’t understand what it is about Chris’s in particular that gets him so hot.

Never butt-stuff, though. Chris hasn’t offered again and Zach doesn’t push it, afraid that Chris will reiterate his hook-up rules. The idea of Chris calling him just another hook-up again doesn’t sit well with Zach.

Nor do they return to Zach’s house together. Once he’s sucked Chris as dry as he can, Zach heads home on his own to eat a hasty dinner and fall into bed, exhausted.

On his last day, Karl holds a brief farewell for him after the work is finished, and Zach leaves the site with invitations to come back if he wants to try some _real_  work. “You all have to come to the premiere, okay?” he says to the crew. “I’ll get tickets.”

“Mate, I’ll be there, going off like a frog in a sock,” Eric tells him, slapping him hard on the back. Chris assures Zach later that it’s a positive thing in context.

At Chris’s apartment, with Chris already stripped down to his briefs and pulling at Zach’s shirt, he reiterates the offer. “I mean it, I want you to come to the premiere. Although I don’t know how good the movie will be. The production schedule is insane, but it usually is on low-budget indies like this.”

Chris finally pulls off Zach’s tee and pushes him down on the sofa to kiss him, until Zach pulls away to ask, “So you’ll come?”

“To what?”

“The premiere.” Zach frowns. Maybe it’s too much like Douchebag Actor who promised to take Chris to a premiere and then pulled out.

“I don’t think I can make it. I’m busy that day. Or night.”

“Yeah, see, you don’t even know when it is. You don’t have to make excuses. If you don’t want to go, that’s totally cool.”

“Okay. I’d rather not. Dressing up in a suit and talking to vapid people isn’t my idea of a great time.”

It’s  _not_  totally cool that Chris doesn’t want to go, Zach discovers. But he can hardly object now. “Alright,” he says, a little hurt. “Maybe you can make the after-party instead.”

“I’ve gone way too long without your cock in my mouth. Come on, get these off.” Chris tugs at Zach’s jeans until Zach capitulates and unbuttons.

“I’m gonna miss seeing you every day,” he says, as Chris pulls at his underwear.

There’s something wrong about the way Chris looks at him then, his eyes full of despair and longing for a moment before he drops his head. Zach puts out his hands, meaning to cup his face and ask what the problem is, but Chris’s mouth is kissing down his cock before he can take a breath, and he finds himself threading his fingers through sun-bleached hair instead.

Chris pauses to roll a condom on him, but he still won’t look up. Usually he teases more, strings it out until Zach is desperate, but today he’s systematic and almost perfunctory. He keeps up a fast pace until Zach comes, and then slides up to hold Zach back into the sofa cushions, bruising both their mouths with ferocious kisses until Zach  _knows_  something is up.

“Wait.” He wriggles out from underneath Chris as much as he’s able to on this small, crowded sofa. He divests himself of the used rubber and throws it – expert now – into the wastepaper basket a few feet away. He sits up and looks at Chris, whose blue eyes are fixed on a point beyond Zach’s left shoulder and radiate distance, caution. “Don’t get me wrong, that was great, but there’s something not right about this. What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is, we’re talking when we should be moving on to round two.”

“It’s not a competition,” Zach says carefully. “I feel like you have some motivations here that I’m not clear on.”

“It’s not a movie scene, either,” Chris replies, his tone brittle. “You want to stop, fine. We’ll stop.”

“Dude. Quit being a jerk.” Chris scowls and tries to pull away, but Zach grabs at him. “Come on, you know what I mean. Something’s going on in that brain of yours and I want to know what it is.”

“More research?” Chris asks coldly.

“That right there – that’s what I’m talking about. What is  _up_  with you?”

For a moment, Zach thinks Chris is going to lose his temper as an ugly, anguished expression passes across his face. But instead, Chris falls back on the sofa and covers his face with his hands. “I’m gonna miss you, is all. I got used to having your skinny ass following me around site all day.” He rubs at his eyes and lets his arms drop to his side, turns to look at Zach. “I’m going to miss you,” he says again.

Zach scoots over to him with a bright smile. “Is that all? Hey, it’s okay. We might not see each other every day, but it’s not like my time is precious. I can come visit you on-site, and we’re going to hang out, right?”

“You want that?”

“Oh, Princess. Don’t make me write one of those high school notes. ‘Do you like me? Yes or No.’ I already know which box you’d check.” Zach straddles him, fishing around in his briefs for his dick, not as hard as it was a few moments ago when it was pushing into Zach’s thigh, but firming up quickly. “Of course I want to hang out with you. Maybe we’ll get crazy and go out for coffee or a movie or something, instead of spending all our time doing this.”

“There’s a lot to be said for doing this,” Chris points out, his voice shaky. Zach stops jacking him for a second, holds his hand up to Chris’s mouth.

“You can do better than that,” he says, as Chris lets a slow trickle of spit gather in Zach’s palm. “You know you like it wet. Come on.” He slides his other hand around the back of Chris’s neck and gives a light squeeze, enjoying the way it makes those bright blue eyes go glassy. Chris might claim his fantasies are pedestrian, but Zach is willing to bet there’s some kinky shit going on in the recesses of his mind. He’s looking forward to finding out, over time. Chris spits again into his palm; with the other, Zach pats his cheek in approval. “One more,” he says encouragingly, like he’s talking to a puppy in training, and then “That’s a good boy,” as Chris obeys.

Chris drops his head back when Zach gets a slick hand around his cock. “See, that’s much better,” Zach tells him. “Nice and smooth.”

“You’re good to me,” Chris says, his voice husky. He slides his hands up Zach’s sides, over his chest, stops to pinch at Zach’s nipples with the perfect amount of pressure.

“Damn right I am. You feel like an ass fuck?” Chris hesitates, and then his hands fall away from Zach’s chest. “I meant, do you want to fuck me,” Zach amends quickly, but Chris’s reaction has speared him through with rejection even as he tries to pretend he doesn’t care.

Hook-up rules still firmly in place, apparently.

Chris is trying to cover up the sudden awkwardness. “Nah, it’s good like this for now. I like, uh. I like your hand.”

“Sure. Offer’s on the table, though,” Zach says casually. He pushes the rebuff aside in his mind, watching the pink-flushed tip of Chris’s dick thrusting up through the circle of his fingers and thumb, slit leaking. “You know what I like? Watching you shoot all over that adorable bellybutton.”

With Chris’s breathless laugh, the atmosphere is back to normal. “Keep doing that and it’ll happen.” Zach obliges, kissing him and working his cock until Chris arches underneath him. Zach leans back to watch, easing up on his rhythm and massaging out the last of it before slithering down between Chris’s legs to lick up all that glorious jizz, something that Chris has never had any rules about. He pays special attention to the bellybutton region, and Chris runs an affectionate hand through his hair as he works his tongue around it.

“As much as I’d like to take you out to coffee and movies and all that good wholesome dating stuff, I  _definitely_  want to do this a lot too,” Zach says happily, resting his head on the soft, warm, slightly sticky skin of Chris’s belly.

“Mm.”

“Come to the premiere. Please. I’ll beg if I have to.”

“Why do you  _want_  me there so bad?” Chris asks, irked. Zach can feel the atmosphere shifting again, but ignores it.

“I’ve seen your work. I’d like you to see mine. Say you’ll come. Please? Or I’ll bug you till you say yes.”

“I’ll think about it.” Chris gives Zach’s shoulder a little push. “Shove over. I need to clean myself up. Then back for more.”

“No, stay here. I’ll get you a washcloth. I like taking care of you,” Zach says, grinning goofily. “Makes me feel good. Useful.” He sits up and stretches.

Chris sighs, and with it, they’re back to awkwardness. “I don’t need you to take care of me.”

“I just meant—”

“Once again:  _not_  an abandoned puppy,” Chris snaps.

The irritation is catching. Zach tilts his head, giving Chris a critical look. “Then why do you act like you are?”

Angry crimson suffuses Chris’s chest and neck, rising into his cheeks, before he says, “I beg your fucking pardon?”

“You don’t just build apartments and offices, do you? You’ve built up walls for yourself, keeping people out. But we can all hear you crying inside your tower, Princess. That’s what makes people want to help you.”

Chris jumps up from the sofa. “I don’t want help. I don’t  _need_  help. I’m not sitting around waiting for my goddamn Prince to arrive and save me. Fuck  _you_ , Hollywood. You’ve known me a week and you figure that makes you an expert on my life? I’m working my ass off to provide for myself  _and_  help out my parents. What are you doing? Spending your trust fund on coke and booze and fucking twinks in the back of limousines?”

Zach’s mouth drops open. “I don’t have a—”

“Oh, excuse me. Spending your  _allowance_. God, you’re such an  _asshole_ , Quinto.”

“Yeah? Well, so are you, Pine.” Zach’s fury feels pure and cold, and he gives it free reign. “You don’t like hearing the truth, that’s okay, but you don’t get to make up shit about me just because it makes you feel justified. I don’t know who this guy is, spending his money on drugs and sex, but it’s sure as hell not me.”

And then Zach could  _swear_  he hears Karl’s voice in his head.  _No, genius. It’s not you._  “Oh,” he says aloud. “This isn’t about me. This is about that last actor you dated.”

“Who told you about that?” Chris demands, appalled, and for a moment they’re petrified in a tableau of a naked, one-sided argument, Chris’s hands pulling the hair at the back of his own neck and Zach’s face fixed in understanding. Chris lets out a long, jerky breath and drops his head, folding his elbows around his face for a moment before looking up again. “Was it Zoë?”

“You know she’d never talk to me voluntarily,” Zach points out. “It was Karl, if you must know. After we had that fight and you ran up Delilah like the hounds of hell were after you.”

Chris stares at the wall then, until he shakes his head and says, “Goddamn gossips,” but the fight has gone out of him.

“He didn’t tell me much. Just that you had a track record with some actor, and John and Zoë hated him.”

Chris bends, searches for his jeans and then fumbles to pull them on. “I think you’d better go.”

“I know you got hurt, but—”

“Zach, I’m done talking.” Chris sounds tired again, exhausted like he did on the one night he slept in Zach’s bed. “I can’t do this with you. You need to leave me alone. Go be rich and famous. Enjoy. Do whatever you want to do, just – go.”

  
***

 

 

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“So, I wasn’t even sure if you would talk to me tonight.”

Chris looks away, uncomfortable, and pulls at his collar. “Are these damn bow ties supposed to be this tight?” he asks.

“Because you know, I tried to call you over the last six months. A lot. And you never showed up to the premiere. I know it was just some dinky independent, but it was a lot of fun.”

Around them, the crowd eddies and flows: women in satin and sparkles, and men in black tie. It’s opening night for the building, which is set to house a new art gallery. The finished product is beautiful, and took Zach’s breath away when he stepped out of the limo behind his uncle. Zach knows nothing about architecture, but he can see the art in the construction of this sweeping, glass-entranced building and the way it rises gracefully into the twilight sky.

“I only came tonight because I thought you’d be here, man,” Zach tries again. “Every time I visited the site you avoided me, and Karl would never let me up on Delilah again.”

“You didn’t tell him I call her—”

“No, of course not.” Zach grins. “Contrary to popular opinion, I’m not a giant douchebag.”

Chris looks down at his untouched glass of champagne.

“So how come you didn’t come out to the premiere last week? Everyone else did, even Zoë, and she hates me.”

“Hate’s a strong word.”

“Can you just tell me what happened to make things go so wrong? The way we left things that last day wasn’t great, but I thought – well, you know. I thought I was more than just a hook-up.”

Chris won’t answer him. He says instead, “I’ve never been to one of the building openings before, although your uncle always makes a point of inviting the crew.”

“Too fake for you?”

Chris gives a bark of laughter. “I could never afford to rent a tux.”

Zach swallows, and tries to concentrate on the good. “But you came tonight. Why?”

“I could afford the suit this time. I got a raise.”

It’s not what Zach wanted to hear, but he puts aside his disappointment and feels happy for Chris. “I moved,” he offers. He downs his champagne and grabs another glass from a passing waiter with a nod of thanks. “Two of my college buddies came out to LA, so we’re all living together in an apartment.”

Chris gives him a sharp look. “Please don’t tell me you’re playing poor in you next film.”

“Give me some credit, okay?” Zach pleads. “I stopped my allowance. I got a second job waiting tables and I’m paying my own way. Yeah, I’m always going to have a safety net, but I never want to land in it. I thought a lot about you, the way you want to take care of yourself and not rely on other people to do it for you and I wanted to get out of my bubble.”

“More research, huh?”

Chris is not going to let it go.

Zach rubs a hand through his hair. He uses a lot less product these days, so his hand doesn’t come away sticky. “I don’t know what to say to make you stop looking at me and seeing cash, okay? But I’m more than that.”

Karl interrupts them then with a wide smile, shaking Zach’s hand vigorously. “Great shindig, Hollywood, even better than the premiere. Come on – we have a present for you.”

Zach raises his eyebrows at Chris, who shrugs, and they follow Karl over to where Eric, Zoë and John are gathered at the outskirts of the crowd. Eric is holding a hard-hat, brand new and neon pink. He hands it to Zach without preamble, and Zach, laughing, sees HOLLYWOOD written in big black letters across the back.

“Honorary member of the crew,” Karl tells him warmly. “Great movie last week. You did good, kid.”

“It was just a few scenes,” Zach says, but he’s smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. “But I’m glad you approved. The director actually appreciated my input.” Zach ended up with more face-time than he expected in the final cut.

The group chats for a few more minutes, although Chris disappears, and then so do the others, until Zach finds himself face to face with Zoë, dressed in a vibrant red silk sheath, and as cool and quiet as she ever was towards him on-site.

“How have you been?” he asks, for something to say.

Zoë flicks her hair back over her shoulder. “Fine.”

“Why do you  _hate_  me so much?” Zach asks, fed up. “Seriously, what did I ever do to you?”

“Here’s something interesting,” she says, ignoring the question. “Working IT on-site means I also have access to the security cameras.”

She swirls her champagne and looks away as though she’s bored, while her words sink in to Zach’s mind. “Security…cameras?” He can feel the blood draining from his face.

Zoë nods. “They’re everywhere on-site. Including the tower crane.  _Including_  the catwalk.” She looks back at him now, her lips slightly pursed. “Apparently, Chris is not aware of this fact.”

“Oh, God. You saw – did  _John_ —?” Zach asks hoarsely.

“I am the  _only_  one who saw, and naturally, as soon as I realized what was going on, I paused the recording and erased it. Chris is my friend and my colleague. He has my respect, even though he’s prone to making mistakes.” She flicks her eyes up and down Zach’s figure on the last word.

“But you don’t respect me.”

“It takes more than donuts and a heartfelt performance on the big screen to earn my respect. He could have been fired for something like that, but you didn’t care. I bet you didn’t even think about it, did you?”

Zach takes a moment to calm his panicky breathing, before he starts thinking it’s a little unfair that he’s taking all the blame here. But it’s definitely not the time to argue the point. “Thank you for covering for us. For Chris. I appreciate it more than I can say.”

She inclines her head in graceful acceptance.

“Zoë – if you’d give me a chance, I’d like to earn your respect.”

“Why? You barely know me, and you’re not planning to come back to construction any time soon, are you?”

“No. Not to work, anyway. But.” He can’t say it out loud, because he’s superstitious.

Zoë’s eyes widen with comprehension, and she looks across the room to where Chris is hovering by a buffet table, gobbling mini-quiches with guilty glances around like someone is going to stop him.

“Even if you can’t bring yourself to respect me, perhaps benign disinterest?” Zach suggests.

For the first time he can remember, he sees Zoë’s lips curve into a smile, although it still lacks warmth. “I could probably manage benign interest, on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“Be good to him.”

“I’ll do my very best.” He gives a relieved chuckle. “Oddly enough, this is going  _way_  better than John’s ‘I’ll rip your balls off’ conversation.”

Zoë takes an elegant, tiny sip of her drink. “I’ll do much worse than rip your balls off, Hollywood.”

Zach doesn’t doubt it.

“I’ve reached the limit of my interest in your love life,” Zoë tells him. “Buzz off and let me enjoy myself.”

Zach bumps into Eric on his walk to the buffet table, who nods at Zoë and says, “Bit like a funnel-web spider, mate. Harmless if you leave her alone.”

He gives Eric a wry smile and continues on his way to Chris. “I need to talk to you.”

Chris pauses with another mini-quiche halfway to his mouth and says, “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well?”

“In private. Please.”

“Where exactly is private around here, Zach?”

He has a point. “We could go back to your place?” Chris gets a cautious look in his eye, but Zach ignores it and places a hand on the small of Chris’s back. “I mean it, Princess. We’re having this out one way or another. You can kick me out again after we talk, but for now – shuffle.”

They take Chris’s truck, since he’s only had two sips of champagne, and it doesn’t take long to reach his apartment. Inside, Zach tries not to stare. Chris has a new sofa, and bookshelves now house his books. The microwave seems like a new model, too. The air is warm, and not unpleasant after the chill outside.

“I upgraded a little,” Chris says briefly, yanking off his bow tie and unbuttoning his shirt collar. “Christ. I feel like an ape dressed up for laughs in this thing.”

“You look good. Suave. Pine, Chris Pine.”

Chris runs a hand through his hair. “So what do you want?” he asks, irritated.

Zach sits on the couch and waits for Chris to do the same. Chris sits rigidly on the sofa, hands on his knees and balled into fists, looking at the opposite wall.

“I missed you,” Zach tells him, and Chris remains silent. He might as well cut to the chase. “Can you tell me whether I’m totally off-track here? Because I thought there was a spark between us. I  _thought_  we made a connection.”

Chris’s lips press together, and he gives a reluctant nod at the television.

“But you don’t want a connection,” Zach says sadly. It’s not a question.

“Jesus motherfucking shit fuck  _shit_.” Chris springs up from the sofa, and Zach gets the impression that he’d pace the room if it were actually big enough. “I can’t  _afford_  to have a connection with you, Zach. It was great while it lasted, believe me, and I enjoyed every second of it. You’re a really nice guy, and you’re genuine and funny, and amazingly hot and a formidablesucker of cock. But I can’t give you the things you want and the things that I’d want to give you. I knew that the second you turned up in a limousine tonight. We couldn’t go to fancy restaurants because I would never be able to pay my half. We couldn’t go to plays, or—”

“I don’t care about that stuff. And anyway—”

“Don’t you  _dare_  say you would pay.”

“I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say, and anyway, I wouldn’t want to leave the bed for at least the first three months, so we’d save a whole lot of cash right there.”

Chris stops dead and stares at him, surprise and amusement tugging his mouth up at the corner.

Zach leans back in the sofa. “Formidable sucker of cock, huh?”

“Like you didn’t know it.”

The teasing tone in his voice gives Zach a flicker of hope.

“I understand that you don’t want to feel unequal,” Zach says carefully. “Really. But it would be sad if we couldn’t give it a shot and see what happens. Not even trying, that’s a cop-out. You spend your life taking risks, climbing up hundreds of feet in the air every day, and you can’t even take a chance on me?” It hits home, Zach can see. Chris’s face changes, relaxes, his mouth softening from a thin line back into a full-lipped distraction. “You don’t want people helping you, okay. But I’m asking you to help  _me_  out – give me a chance. Just a chance. And I promise, if I discover that I can’t live without caviar for breakfast every morning, I’ll drop you like a brick.”

Chris, thankfully, laughs. He sits down again, and looks at Zach affectionately. “What if I still say no?”

“If you still say no, I’m gonna have to humiliate you by showing up every day to your work site with a packed lunch for you, until you eat one with me.”

Chris slides towards him a little on the sofa. “What would you bring?”

“PB and J,” Zach says immediately, shifting forward too. “That’s what you said you liked.”

“Aw, that’s too bad. I was starting to get used to all your elaborate sandwiches.” They’re close enough to kiss now, and Chris’s blue eyes are twinkling.

“Baby, you can have  _whatever_  you like,” Zach says, and kisses him.

They make out for a while, rubbing against each other fully clothed until Zach starts unbuttoning Chris’s shirt-front.

“Wait,” Chris says, and sits up. His hair is mussed and his mouth and neck pink from rubbing against Zach’s face.

“Wait?” Zach repeats, his heart freezing.

“Yeah, get up for a second. This new sofa – it folds out.”

Zach leaps up and watches Chris pull out the sofa-bed. It’s already made up with sheets, and then he pulls a quilt out from behind the sofa to smooth over the top, and a couple of pillows, before yanking Zach back down on to it.

They lie side by side, looking at each other, smiling. “I know what you’re thinking,” Chris says.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. How extravagant of me to actually get a fold-out bed.” He laughs.

Zach cups his face and rubs a thumb over Chris’s lips. He’s missed them – full and with a perfectly-shaped cupid’s bow, slightly dry because Chris is always licking them. “Actually, I was thinking about the hook-up rules.”

“Ah, yes,” Chris says. “The hook-up rules.” Zach waits patiently, but his pulse beats faster. “I think we can forget about those.”

“Sure? Because I don’t want to try to call you in a few days and go to voicemail again. I mean it. If we’re really giving this thing a try, you can’t back out in a few hours and tell me to fuck off back to lifestyles of the wealthy and moderately well-known.” He pauses, unsure whether to admit to it, but then adds, “It hurt. Last time.”

Chris covers Zach’s hand with his own and gives it a squeeze. “I’m sorry. Really. In the douchebag spectrum, I am the most giant of them all. It might be that I have a  _tiny_  chip on my shoulder.”

“I don’t blame you. I’m starting to understand how completely easy my whole life has been – financially, anyway.” He can see the skepticism in Chris’s eye, but chooses to ignore it for now. There’s plenty of time to have arguments and debates down the track, when they need a break from all the incredible sex they’re going to have. Speaking of— “I don’t want you to feel like you  _have_  to get rid of your rules. We can take it slow. I think it’s cool that you’re ultra-safe like that.”

“I should probably tell you, those rules weren’t  _just_  about safety, especially the no-butt-stuff. I tend to get a little vocal. When, you know.”

“When you have a cock in your ass? I swear to God, you could  _not_  be any more enchanting.”

Chris bursts out laughing. “I’m sensitive inside,” he says at last.

“I already knew that,” Zach murmurs, rolling them over so he’s on top. “Sensitive and prickly and complicated and so, so fascinating. But back to your ass. You’re a screamer?  _That’s_  why you don’t include it in your regular repertoire?”

“It’s kind of embarrassing, if I’m not close with the guy. The last guy I bottomed for, he really got off on it, but only because it stroked his ego, you know?”

“The last guy – are we talking about that actor?”

“Yeah,” Chris admits. “I’m probably breaking all the rules, here. Discussing exes in bed, talking about what the sex was like—”

“We’re throwing the rules out,” Zach reminds him. Inside, he’s thinking scathingly about Hollywood Version 1.0, who couldn’t see what Zach sees. He’s also thinking about how much he wants to fuck those memories right out of Chris. “Just so we’re clear, I’ve officially graduated to butt privileges?”

“Congratulations. Your diploma is in the mail.”

“In that case, while I’d love to continue this deep and meaningful conversation afterwards—”

“You’d rather get deep and meaningful in my ass right now? Totally works for me.” They don’t bother teasing each other with a slow reveal, stripping off with methodical speed. Chris grabs an indiscriminate handful of condoms from his dresser and throws them, along with the lube, under one of the pillows. He crawls back onto the bed to lie face-down, but then twists to look at Zach with a challenge in his eyes. “Come on, Hollywood. What are you waiting for?”

Now that he thinks about it, Zach is glad they waited to do this until Chris had an actual bed. Fucking him on the old couch would have been clumsy at best. On the new fold-out, he gets to see Chris splayed out, golden against the pale blue sheets, one hand under his face and a leg hiked up to allow access. In the small of Chris’s back, Zach discovers the Chris Taste again, unadulterated and delicious. The flesh of Chris’s ass is firm and downy under Zach’s mouth, and fills his hands so perfectly it might have been molded just for him.

He parts the cheeks to get his first look at Chris’s hole, and the bronze curls garnishing his crack without drawing any attention away from the main event. It’s like a siren goes off behind Zach’s eyes,  _fuck him, fuck him now, get your dick in there as fast as you can_ , but he shakes it off, surprised at himself. He drops his forehead to rest on the plump cushion of Chris’s right ass cheek, cool and pleasant under his warm brow. He can’t stop the overexcited grin that makes his face ache.

“Please don’t tell me the sight of my butthole suddenly turned you straight,” Chris says eventually.

Zach actually cackles, and has to catch himself, calm his lust with a few soothing squeezes on his dick. “Definitely not. Never been so happy to be a gay man as I am right now.”

“Okay. As much as I appreciate your voyeuristic side, maybe we could move things along?” Chris has propped himself up and is looking down at Zach with indulgence.

Keeping eye contact with him, Zach opens his mouth, bites down on a chunk of ass and says, “Sure,” indistinctly. Chris collapses back down on to the pillow and  _gurgles_ , and Zach can’t stop himself from experimenting after that. He makes a meticulous mental record of the noises that each nibble, suck and lick draws out of Chris; memorizes the gasping, stuttering nonsense that streams out of his mouth when Zach undulates the tip of his tongue into his hole. ‘Vocal’ doesn’t begin to cover it, and Zach hasn’t even pushed a finger into him yet.

At a later date, when his balls aren’t aching for release like they are now, Zach decides he’s going to string it out, make Chris beg for it every step of the way. But it’s not a good idea right now, not when Chris might think it’s just an ego thing.

So for now, Zach slathers his fingers in lube and gets to work. He spends some time massaging that perfect little hole until Chris is relaxed and moaning into the pillow. Zach’s finger disappears up to the second knuckle with no effort. Chris bears down on him with a stifled and impatient groan, letting Zach all the way in. He’s plush inside, soft and inviting and warm, and for a second the driving need to get in there, fuck until they both go blank, beats in Zach’s mind in tandem with Chris’s pulse.

“Come on. Come on, I can take it. Hurry up.” Chris’s whisper is harsh in the silence of the room, and Zach obeys, working him harder. The noise Chris makes could fairly be categorized as a whine, Zach thinks, and it’s all the encouragement he needs, pushing in with a second finger. He bites again at the flesh of his butt, relishing the way the muscles jump under his mouth, clench around his fingers.

“Okay? Uncomfortable?”

“No, no, no. No.  _No_. Good.”

Zach has to remind himself that the blissful babbling is not due to his prowess as a lover, it’s just that Chris is really, really sensitive. And adorable. And _God_  does Zach want to get inside him, but just as he’s made up his mind that two fingers and an enthusiastic tongue is enough ground work to fuck, Zoë’s words come back to him:  _Be good to him_. It sobers him immediately, and he continues to take his time, until Chris has evidently had enough.

“Come on, come on,” he demands, reaching down to tug at Zach’s wrist. “Zach, come  _on_.”

Zach fishes for a tissue and wipes his fingers before rubbering up in record time. Plenty more lube, and then he asks, “How do you wanna…”

Chris accommodatingly flips onto his back, stuffs a pillow under his hips, and stretches his arms up above his head, flexing in pleasure as Zach’s cock nudges into his crack. He wraps his legs around Zach’s waist as Zach pushes in, pauses, thrusts in again. They both give a long hiss of satisfaction, and then snicker at the synchronized sound.

Zach starts to move, slowly at first until Chris encourages him with a yank at his hip. He gives in to the need after that and thrusts in hard, regular strokes, aware of Chris’s increasingly-loud cries. Zach leans down to kiss him and swallow the noise.

Chris definitely has to shoot first, because Zach wants to hear what he sounds like when he’s sated, but still stuffed full of dick. He’s trying to hold on, but the way Chris is writhing underneath him, impaled and pleading, rushes him too fast to the edge of climax. He stops, holding down Chris’s hips, and leans in to whisper to him.

“Get on top of me. I want to watch you.” Chris’s ass tightens like a vise on him at the words, almost wrenching an orgasm out of him by sheer force. “ _Move._ ”

Zach could get into this bossy Dom stuff. It’s gratifying to have Chris snap to obey, rolling them over with Zach still inside him and sitting up on top. Zach bends his legs up to give him something to lean back against, and oh, yeah. This is one of his best ideas  _ever_. “That’s right, sit there and jack yourself off. You’re so fucking hot, I just wanna watch you for now.” Watch, and calm his dick down for a few minutes. He puts his hands behind his head.

It’s like being in live, surround-sound porn: he gets to watch the way Chris’s chubby ballsack quivers with his rapid hand movement; feel his own cock rhythmically clenched in Chris’s slick, tight hole; hear Chris moaning out his pleasure. It’s euphoric to watch Chris shoot, aiming up towards himself so that it splashes over his stomach before dripping back down onto Zach. The scent of it fills the room. Chris slumps backwards against Zach’s legs gasping and grunting, cock still twitching.

Zach stretches underneath him like it’s all in a day’s work. “It’s not break time yet,” he says with a smirk, and Chris pants out a laugh.

“Jesus. Give me a second to get my breath back.”

“Come on, Princess. Show me what you can do with that talented ass.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“That’s the whole idea.”

Chris leans forward to pinch at his nipples, and Zach arcs into his hands. “Give it to me, if you want me so bad,” Chris says. Zach grabs him by the hips and slams into him, satisfaction warming his gut when he hears Chris start up a chorus of yelps. It’s not long before Chris is slapping up and down on him in determination, and Zach thinks fondly of Delilah for the endurance she’s produced in Chris’s thighs.

He’s about to settle in for a nice, long fuck accompanied by the Chris Concert when Chris grabs his hand and pulls it off his hip. He swipes Zach’s fingers down over his sticky chest and stomach, presses them into his bellybutton, and massages.

“You – you  _fucker_ ,” Zach huffs, just before he unloads in the rubber, deep in Chris’s ass.

Chris is still chuckling when Zach’s breath returns to normal. He raises himself up carefully, holding the condom by the base. “You’re so easy,” he tells Zach, before knotting the rubber and disposing of it.

“You didn’t play fair.” Zach pulls him down for snuggling, pressing up against his back and sighing into the nape of his neck. “That was so  _good_.”

“It really was.” Chris sounds impressed with both of them.

“Better than Hollywood: Original Flavor?” Zach can’t believe he just asked Chris to compare them, and adds quickly, “Oh, my God, forget I said that. Sorry. My big damn mouth.”

But Chris sounds amused when he says, “Actually, yeah, it was better. Nice work, Hollywood II. Even if you did lose it the second you touched my bellybutton.”

“You guys didn’t actually call him Hollywood on-site, did you?”

“Jealous?”

“Maybe.”

“No, he wasn’t called Hollywood. Most of the crew called him ‘That Jackass.’”

Zach laughs more than the joke warrants, feeling smug.

“You haven’t asked me much about him,” Chris says tentatively. “Do you not want to know, or not care, or are you being kind, or—”

“Definitely care. Not sure I want to know, but it’s up to you. I don’t usually demand the intimate details of my partner’s romantic history, but I know it knocked you around, what happened with him. If you want to tell me about it, I’m all ears.”

“I guess Karl already told you some.”

“A very brief overview, couched in fake names and vagueness.”

“No one knows the full story, anyway. I was too ashamed to tell anyone what happened afterwards.”

Zach waits, and Chris eventually speaks again.

“I didn’t get it, that he was done. That it meant nothing. I thought I loved him, and I  _thought_  he loved me. He never said it but…”

“But you hoped?” Zach definitely doesn’t want to hear about this, doesn’t want to live Chris’s pain and humiliation with him. He’s going to, though, because Chris needs to tell it.

“I hoped,” Chris confirms. “He seemed really caring. He took me out to dinner, paid for everything, asked me all about my life. He bought me this fancy new blu-ray player and a hi-def TV and all his back catalogue – I sold it all,” he says, as he feels Zach look around. “After I realized we were done. Didn’t have the space for it, anyway.”

“How long did it go on?”

“A few months, and then he suddenly stopped calling me. I called  _him_  for a couple of weeks after. He never picked up, but I figured he was busy with stuff, so I left messages. Stupid stuff, you know? Really stupid. Fantasies.” Zach cringes, hoping that Chris won’t elaborate, and thankfully he doesn’t. “The only thing I’m grateful for is that the guy was such a shit, I bet he deleted them all without listening to them first. That’s what I pretend, anyway.”

He turns over in Zach’s arms to face him, and Zach has to school his face into neutrality.

“You look upset,” Chris says, and Zach makes a mental note to practice his neutral face in the mirror later.

“Yeah. I’m upset.”

“You haven’t even heard the worst of it yet. About two weeks after I started a close personal relationship with his voicemail, he called me back. Told me in _great_  detail about his new fuckbuddy, but hey, we’d had a great time and he’d like to help me out on the rent since I’d been so helpful. He said he’d send me a check for ten grand. Yeah, your face right now? Was basically mine then.”

“You need to tell me who this fucker is so I can go kneecap him.”

Chris gives a wan smile. “So anyway, I didn’t take his money.”

“Of course not,” Zach says indignantly.

“There’s no ‘of course not’ about it, Zach. I spent six months wishing I  _had_  taken it, because it would’ve made things just a little easier for just a little while. Then I spent six months after that feeling disgusted with myself, and another six not knowing what the fuck I thought about anything. And then you turned up.”

Zach can’t think of anything to say, so he just squeezes Chris closer and kisses the birthmark next to his ear.

“You really want to know who he was?” Chris asks after the silence stretches.

“If you want to tell me.”

Chris tells him, and Zach’s eyebrows shoot up. “Wow. Uh. I’d give you a high-five if he didn’t turn out to be such an asshole. I didn’t even know he played for our team.”

“Yeah. Jerk, but undeniably hot.”

“Good abs.”

“Yeah.”

“Dude. You hit that. Nice.”

Zach is just thinking he should knock it off when Chris gives a laugh that sounds both relieved and happy at the same time. “Yeah, I hit that. That sounds a lot better than the way I’ve been thinking about it all this time.” His smile gets wider and wider. “I’m such a stud.”

“You are. Way out of my league.”

“His dick wasn’t as big as yours.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. And I’m not just saying it, either. You’re  _definitely_  bigger.” Chris turns on to his back and pulls Zach close again. Zach nestles happily into his side.

“I could get used to this flattery.”

Chris starts stroking his hair, and Zach begins to doze. “So where are we going from here?” Chris asks, and Zach gives a little jolt as he wakes. “Sorry.”

“S’okay. Did I drool? No. Where to from here – you don’t have work tomorrow, do you?”

“Nope.”

“Then I think we should shower, sleep, wake up, spend the morning fucking ourselves silly, have brunch at this cheap and cheerful place I found near where I’m living, then you can come home with me. We can hang out with Neal and Corey for the afternoon and then when they go out to a bar – where they will try and very much fail to acquire some female companionship – we can fuck again until they stumble home drunk off their asses, well before midnight. And then the morning after  _that_ , more fucking, and I can make you a deluxe sandwich to take to work, and then—”

“Okay. I kinda meant more long-term, but that sounds good. Lots of fucking. Neal and Corey are your new flatmates?”

“You’ll like them. I know people always say that, but you really will, I promise. And I totally want to be your boyfriend. Long term. I wouldn't have chased after you all this time if I didn’t.”

“We’re still going to have arguments. You know that, right?”

“Princess, if you can put up with my cluelessness, I can deal with the chip on your shoulder. As long as we always have make-up sex as amazing as that, I don’t care how often we argue. But you have to promise me one thing.” Chris shifts in his arms and raises his eyebrows in a wordless question. “You have to see my movie and tell me how great I was.”  
  
A little crease forms between Chris's eyebrows. He spreads his fingers through Zach’s chest hair and says, “You  _were_  great. I saw it. Not at the premiere, but I went the next day.”  
  
“You did?” Zach’s delight makes Chris smile sadly.  
  
“I did. It’s why I came tonight, because you were so good. I wanted to tell you.  I wanted you to know.”  
  
“Really?” Zach can’t help it; he’s beaming.  
  
“Yeah. But then I acted like such a fucking—”  
  
“I don’t care. I don’t care. You really thought I was good?”  
  
“Amazing. Brilliant. Genius. But goddamn, I really wish I’d gone to the premiere. I’m sorry.”  
  
Zach really wishes he had too, but there’s no use crying over spilt milk, and screw it anyway, because what counts is that Chris thought he was  _good_. “We can go see it again, together. And there’ll be other premieres. With better food, too. Maybe even mini-quiches.”  
  
“Oh, God, they were  _good_. I even thought about stuffing my pockets for a second, but I didn’t want to mess up the damn rental tux.” He pauses and then adds, “Don’t you dare tell anyone on-site I just said that. I’d be ‘Princess Mini-Quiche’ for  _months_.”  
  
Zach is busy melting at the idea that he’s going to be back in Chris’s life, with the potential to talk to his friends and colleagues, spend enough time with them that he might let it slip about Chris’s quiche addiction. “I won’t tell, I promise,” he says at last, his voice syrupy.  
  
“Dude. What is up with you?”  
  
“I just really, really like you. Dude.”  
  
“Hopefully that’ll still last once you actually have to live with my parsimonious ways.”  
  
“Oooh. Parsimonious.  _Nice_.”  
  
“I mean it. Restaurants are for special occasions only.”  
  
“I like to cook. I can make you mini-quiches.”  
  
“And we’ll have a monetary limit for presents, for birthdays and shit. You get that?”  
  
“That’s fine.” Zach holds their arms straight up in the air and threads their fingers together, watching the way the light turns their flesh almost see-through at the edges. He feels an overwhelming fondness for the entire universe.  
  
“It’ll be something really stingy like twenty bucks.”  
  
“Money can’t buy me love, baby. I’m partial to birthday blow-jobs, anyway. And – has anyone ever tied you up?”  
  
Chris gives him a side-long glance.  “Uh. No.”  
  
“Do you think you’d like it?”  
  
“Maybe. I guess we could try.” He licks his lips. “Yeah. Let’s try that.”  
  
“Oh, my God. You are  _so_  going to be worth every penny I don’t spend.”  
  
“That’s a really shitty thing to say, Zach.” Chris is grinning.  
  
“I’m sorry. Truly. Make-up sex?”


End file.
